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Setting the Stage: Retail Store Design and Display in the 20th Century

11/18/23 Saturday Lecture with Dr. Alessandra Wood


Saturday, 11/18/23 10am PT

This presentation will be in-person and over Zoom from the Koret Auditorium at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

In-Person Tickets: $5, sold at the door only \ free for TAC members


Virtual Tickets (Zoom): $5 Members of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Students. $10 General Admission \ free for TAC members.

A recording will be available for two weeks following the talk.


Dr. Alessandra Wood will explore the exciting visual changes that took place in retail settings during the early and mid-twentieth century. Retailers worked with designers to conceive new layouts, interior design features, and merchandise display techniques

to transform the shopping experience for consumers. The talk will focus on American department stores with local examples throughout and showcase illustrative imagery that will allow you to travel back in time to the golden era of department stores.


Dr. Wood is a design historian with an eye towards the future. She is the author of Designed to Sell: The Evolution of Modern Merchandising and Display (Routledge, 2020), which presents an engaging account of mid-twentieth-century retail design and display in America.

Alessandra received her PhD at the University of Delaware, her MA in History of Design and Decorative Arts from Parsons, The New School for Design, and her BA in History of Art from Johns Hopkins University. A lover of design history and theory, she is obsessed

by applying that knowledge to understand what makes products beautiful, useful, and successful, and what inspires people to love those products. Her superpower is the ability to visit a mall once and memorize its layout. She lives in the Bay Area with her family and teaches as an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco.

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VISITOR INFORMATION

de Young aerial view

The Textile Arts Council is a curatorial support organization of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Textiles are displayed at the de Young Museum and at the Legion of Honor, which together form the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Legion of Honor museum

de Young Museum
50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive
Golden Gate Park
San Francisco CA 94118
Tue thru Sun, 9:30am — 5:15pm

Legion of Honor
100 34th Avenue
Lincoln Park
San Francisco CA 94121
Tue thru Sun, 9:30am — 5:15pm

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CONTACT US

The membership of the Textile Arts Council elects volunteers to serve on the Textile Arts Council Board to govern the organization.

For inquiries or information, please contact our TAC administrator at (415) 750-3627.

You may also reach us via email tac@famsf.org

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