Victor Margolin: A Testament - IA de Investigación especializada en el MIT

Víctor Margolín: Un testamento

Víctor Margolín (1941–2019) was Professor Emeritus of Design
History at the University of Illinois, chicago, a seminal figure in the
development of Design History and Design Studies, and a proud
collector of corny puns and kitsch objects. Born in Washington DC,
Victor enrolled to study English Literature and Film at Columbia
University during which time he edited The Columbia Jester, hecho
contributions to MAD magazine, and published two books of puns.
He graduated from Columbia in 1963 with a Fulbright Fellowship
to study at the Institute of Higher Cinema Studies in Paris. On
returning to the US Victor eventually settled in Chicago, en 1975.
Allá, after completing a PhD on Russian constructivist designers,
his career started to take shape with several publications: Americano
Poster Renaissance: The Great Age of Poster Design 1890–1900 (1975),
the edited volume Propaganda: The Art of Persuasion WWII (1976), y
The Promise and the Product: 200 years of American Advertising Posters
(1979). He then secured a tenured post teaching art and design
history at the University of Illinois in 1982, remaining there until
his retirement in 2006. Early in his career at the University Victor
worked with colleagues to establish the academic journal Design
Asuntos (first published in 1984) becoming its founding editor then
remaining a committed member of the editorial board thereafter.
From this point on Victor started to edit and co-edit important vol-
umes of essays on design titled Design Discourse (1989), The Idea of
Diseño (1995), Discovering Design (1995), and The Designed World:
Images, Objects, Environments (2002). Returning to his PhD interests
Victor published The Struggle for Utopia: Rodchenko, Lissitzsky,
Moholy-Nagy, 1917–1946 (1997) followed by a collection of his own
essays titled The Politics of the Artificial: Essays on Design and Design
Estudios (2002). His lifelong interest in puns and kitsch led to the
creation of a private collection of objects he called The Museum of
Corn-temporary Art (which is now in the permanent collection of The
Wolfsonian, Miami) accompanied by the publication of Culture is
Everywhere (2002). Victor’s final major publishing venture was the

Problemas de diseño: Volumen 36, Número 2 Primavera 2020

https://doi.org/10.1162/desi_e_00585

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World History of Design printed in two volumes (2015). He was the
recipient of Lifetime Achievement Awards from LearnXDesign
(2015) and the Design Research Society (2016). Victor was a man of
immense intellectual generosity and a reasoned advocate of de-
sign as a tool to create societies that were more just, equitable, y
compassionate. These values were accompanied by a keen mind
and twinkling eyes that drew Victor to people all over the world.
His deep humanity, ideas, and insights will live on through books
and essays to inspire future generations of designers.

Bruce Brown
Richard Buchanan
Carl DiSalvo
Dennis Doordan
Kipum Lee
Ramia Maze´