Art for Everyday Living

Never-before-realized designs by iconic artists are revived for a new generation.

In the 1960s and ’70s, Art in America commissioned contemporary artists to design coins, ceramics, playing cards, children’s toys, and needlepoint projects as part of the series “Art for Everyday Living.” As an editor at the magazine, I spearheaded a collaboration with Artspace, the Albers Foundation, and Frank Stella to reproduce two of these original projects in limited editions. To celebrate Stella’s 2015 retrospective at the Whitney Museum, we brought to life his geometric needlepoint pillow design featured in the May-June 1968 issue, inviting viewers to sew their own. In 2016, we realized Albers’s playing cards from the magazine’s April 1963 edition in a double deck featuring two of the renowned color theorist’s designs—one blue and one red.