Inside the Design Center | Mingei International Museum

IMPORTANT UPDATE! Our galleries are partially closed while we install our next fall show -- Inside the Design Center! In the meantime, enjoy discounted admission prices. Visit us to see Layered Narratives and Fashioning an Icon (closes on Sept 7th).

The Design Center — a modernist architecture building with large glass windows above a canyon
Image: The Design Center — a modernist architecture building with large glass windows above a canyon
On View

Sep 6, 2025 - Apr 12, 2026

Location

Mingei International Museum

Curated By

Guest Co-Curators Dave Hampton with Steve Aldana and Todd Pitman

A vignette of mid-twentieth century interior, lighting, and furniture design as selected by Ilse Ruocco for her 1950 showroom

Ilse and Lloyd Ruocco’s Design Center, located in the Hillcrest neighborhood of San Diego, was a foundation for the modern design community of the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. Inside the Design Center brings to life a vignette of mid-twentieth century interior, lighting, and furniture design, featuring pieces by significant California designers, manufacturers, and craftspeople as selected by Ilse Ruocco for her 1950 showroom.

This exhibition offers an immersive, revelatory window into San Diego’s culture of modernism through the lens of architecture, design, interior decorating, home goods retailing, landscape architecture, graphic design, and photography. Historic images of the Design Center set the backdrop for over 30 original pieces of modernist furnishings. Works by designers such as Ray Eames, Charles Eames, Greta Magnusson Grossman, Dorothy Schindele, Milo Baughman, and Edith Heath of Heath Ceramics are included. 

Mingei hopes to inspire an appreciation for San Diego’s surprising history of design and architecture. Inside the Design Center taps into the culture and community of postwar modernism, valuing groundbreaking creatives and emphasizing California’s distinct mark on mid-twentieth century design.

Stacking Stools designed and manufactured by Luther Conover, Sausalito, CA., c. late 1940s. Lent by Steve Temme & JC Miller
Charles O. Eames, LCW-Lounge Chairs Wood, California, U.S.A., 1950s. Plywood. Gift of JoAnn and Tim Tanzer, 2015−40−002, 2015−40−001. Coffee Table designed and manufactured by Henrik Van Keppel & Taylor Green, Los Angeles, CA., c. 1949. Lent by Esoteric Survey; Neapolitan flip coffee maker manufactured in Italy; _​Urbino_​coffee cups and saucers designed by Trude Petri-Raben, manufactured by KPM, Berlin. Lent by private collection.

Press Materials

In Conversation with Guest Curators Dave Hampton, Steve Aldana, and Todd Pitman

Inside the Design Center
Inside the Design Center