Americans in the 20th century were offered an astonishing array of domestic utopias. Self-cleaning kitchens, plastic houses assembled in a day, push-button appliances and desktop computers all shaped aspirations about how to live.

Curator Wendy Kaplan explores six decades of radical change through architectural models, advertising, photographs, films, furniture and objects. The goal: to chronicle how the American home of tomorrow was imagined, packaged and sold—by whom, and for whom. While examining the promise of abundance and technological transformation, the exhibition also asks who was excluded from participation, and who imagined radical alternatives.

The narrative unfolds in four overlapping sections, each reflecting a distinct vision of what the “home of the future” could mean. From 1925 to 1945, reformist faith in science, sanitation and electrification recast the house as a rational machine. Between 1945 and 1965, corporate-led abundance promised a consumer paradise of push-button convenience, synthetic materials and newfound leisure. From 1950 to 1970—the High Cold War—geopolitical anxiety recast the purpose of home; domestic life was reimagined through fantasies of control, new forms of telecommunication and space-age spectacle. Finally, from 1965 to 1985, environmental alarm, countercultural experimentation and the microprocessor revolution generated alternative futures that rejected postwar consensus even as personal computing began to redefine daily life.

Together, these visions trace the evolution of the American home from laboratory of technological progress to consumer showroom, and then from the Cold War stage to a site of ecological reckoning and digital transformation.

The exhibition catalog (DelMonico Books, 2026) will be available for a book signing with Wendy Kaplan following the presentation.

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