Navigation

The point of departure for this session is the launch of the Speculative Index, a material and digital expansion of the Index of American Design (IAD). As a federal work-relief program that employed around 1,000 artists between 1936 to 1942, the highest achievement of the IAD, according to critic Louis Filler in 1952, was “the democratic shock of recognition experienced by a cross-section of Americans employed on the Project.” The main output of the original IAD program are 18,980 drawings at the National Gallery of Art documenting a range of objects, from folk art and family heirlooms to fashion and furniture. Expanding on the IAD, the Speculative Index is an interdisciplinary curriculum, communal history project, and design democracy piloted in 2023 at the Corcoran School of Art and Design at the George Washington University.

We invite artists and art instructors, historians, and professionals engaging with archival and museum collections in their practice to give presentations addressing the “democratic impulse” of their work.