Cold Comfort?
To coincide with ‘Cold War Modern’, a major new exhibition at the V & A in London, its consultant curator, David Crowley of the Royal College of Art, looks back on the 1959 Kennedy-Khrushchev ‘Kitchen Debate’ and explores how modern design became an active part of that war.
The Cold War was fought on many fronts. It was contested in space, with the Soviet Union and the United States competing in the race to send satellites into orbit and men to cast their shadows on the dusty surface of the Moon. Olympic stadiums and chessboards also became sites of conflict where socialist and capitalist bodies and minds fought each other. And, of course, the tension between the two systems was kept in nervous check by what American military strategists candidly called MAD (Mutually-Assured Destruction), i.e. the threat of nuclear war. Less well known, perhaps, are the ways in which modern designs – sometimes of products for ordinary consumers – were drawn into the East-West struggle.
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