Imagining Best Products May 7 – June 21, 2026 Branch Museum of Design 2501 Monument Ave. Richmond, Virginia branchmuseum.org Overview: Imagining Best Products is an exhibition of the ideas and artifacts of BEST Products that will be held at the Branch Museum of Design in May-June 2026. About the Show: This exhibition will bring together the legacy of Best Products in architecture, graphic design, business, and artistic patronage. Beginning in the 1970s, Best Products, a retail company founded by Sydney and Frances Lewis in 1957, commissioned a series of experimental stores that transformed our expectations of suburban architecture. Stores designed by James Wines / SITE created a media frenzy in the 1970s and 80s. So did the designs featured in the 1979 exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York entitled “Buildings for Best Products,” which invited prominent young architects to re-imagine big box retail. The Best Headquarters and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts West Wing, both designed by Malcolm Holzman of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates (now Steinberg Hart), further cemented Best’s place in architectural history. The company’s iconic graphic identity, designed by Tom Geismar of Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv, is also an important milestone in corporate design. Together with the Lewis Family’s pioneering patronage of the arts, the story of Best Products is one of the most significant chapters in the history of 20th century American visual culture. “Imagining Best Products” will bring this story to the public, asking us to reconsider the relationships between, art, design, culture, commerce, and the landscapes of everyday life.

Imagining Best Products May 7 – June 21, 2026 Branch Museum of Design 2501 Monument Ave. Richmond, Virginia branchmuseum.org Goals & Audience: 1. To welcome a broad spectrum of society to explore the legacy of Best Products and the Lewis Family. 2. To inspire people in the arts, the business world, and beyond to reconsider the role of culture in commerce. 3. To illustrate the rich connections between architecture, graphic design, and other disciplines. 4. To reach both the general public and those deeply engaged in design. 5. To include an educational and research component in partnership with the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Content: Imagining Best Products will bring together architectural drawings, models, photographs, printed materials, sketches, and other artifacts related to the design of Best Products. The cornerstone of the show will be original materials from globally significant designers including Malcolm Holzman, Tom Geismar, Stanley Tigerman, Robert A.M. Stern, and James Wines / SITE. Other items to be exhibited by the museum will include promotional materials, sketches, graphic works, and drawings related to Best. Historical photographs and interpretative texts will tie together the story of the company and of Frances and Sydney Lewis’s journey in business and in life. Students at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design will also assist in preparing the exhibition. Programing such as talks, tours, and screenings will compliment the exhibit. Dates: May 7th - June 31st, 2026 (provisional) Curator: Don O’Keefe AIA AIJ CPIJ, Architect, Lecturer in Architecture, Harvard University Advisory Committee: James Wines SITE New York Suzan Wines SITE New Yor kMalcolm Holzman Architect, Partner, Steinberg Hart Tom Geismar Founding Partner, Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv Janet Parks Emeritus, Avery Architectural Library, Columbia University Edwin Slipek Writer and architectural historian Elizabeth Cogar Writer and editor

#PoMo architecture heads, and fans of James Wines' provocative 1980s Best Products showrooms & Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer's stunning glass block Best Products Corporate Headquarters will want to mark their calendars, and *not miss* this upcoming exhibition at the #BranchMuseumOfDesign in Richmond VA.

this project is a monument to every dysfunction of us-american art institutions

Zumthor's LACMA bridging over Wiltshire Boulevard. Photo credit: Edwin Folven

MAD Architects' Lucas Museum bridging over West 39th Street. Image via Google Maps

Awaiting the inevitable comparison essay.

I can't wait for reports of how all the art is getting damaged from light exposure in a few years.

👍 😉

If you want to see the future of art museums, don't go to #lacma, go to the new Cartier Foundation in Paris, a museum that shows what actual mainstream decolonization practice looks like.

4. The Erewhon cafe reveals its real ideology - not art, but insta.

"Erewhon stands like hardly any other brand for the lifestyle of Los Angeles: expensive, supposedly healthy, a bit pretentious, instagrammable."

The backless benches increase disability for older visitors.
3/3

2. Noise. Sound planning seems absent as the interior rooms are noisy, thus leading to further perimeterization.

3. The absence of categories and signage is elitist, not democratic, as it benefits the already educated. A "public" museum has failed its task of mass education.

aargh, it should be the Germans say what the Americans won't
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Can you please supply the link to the original article? The archive link isn't working. —Thanks!

A monumental testament to the hubris of the last decade. To demolish a serviceable campus to build this monster. And now if I want to enjoy a gallery of post-1945 abstract expressionist paintings from the permanent collection, as I did in the prior building, good luck! LACMA member? never again!

I’m sorry: so many of us are out here trying to find ways to bring art to as many people as possible and expanded accessibility as wide as it can go. And here’s LACMA opening an Erewhon bar proving they only care about one percent of the population. Clueless extravagance. Do better.

I go to Erwhwon. I wander it, mouth agape in wonder at the prices and people filling carts. I buy nothing and go home feeling wiser. So, basically it’s just like a museum.

I feel like LACMA partnering with a criminally expensive grocery store really epitomizes where the museum went wrong. Supposedly accessible for LA residents, the museum is expanding into the inaccessible. Honestly the elitism is just fucking annoying.

Concrete staircase coming down to the street from the new LACMA building in LA

Concrete staircase and escalator connecting the Silver Line and Green Line under the 105/110 interchange in LA

The new Zumthor LACMA building is the most LA thing I've ever seen. It's like a homage to the 105/110 interchange and the absolute worst transit station ever built.

That the spent so much money (and resources) to create a place with *less* display space doesn't feel very future focused. Doesn't LACMA (or Lacma) want to have a growing collection?

Say goodbye to this exquisite ancient Greek krater too.

What the hell are they smoking over there?
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Ironically, it's not an expansion—rather, a contraction.

This $724M #RazeAndRebuild (a.k.a. teardown)—in an existential climate crisis, natch —is 105,108 sq. feet smaller than the demolished #LACMA building complex, and yields 53,000 sq. feet less gallery space.

lareviewofbooks.org/article/lacm...

Say goodbye to this exquisite ancient Greek krater too.

What the hell are they smoking over there?
bsky.app/profile/n3ti...

i am looking at this lacma reopening. really? they leave a red figure bell krater like that in the open?

finally saw some art in the new lacma gallery and… wow it’s dark in there! or bright! lighting is weird. vibe is weird. really glad it’s open but also… wow. doesn’t feel like a museum for better/worse

Any journalistic or critical address of LACMA's new building that fails to foreground that LACMA has contracted itself, that it now has less gallery space than it did before, is malpractice.

(Has any US art museum ever done this, or is this a Govan table-of-one? I can't think of another.)

LACMA: Suicide by Architecture | Los Angeles Review of Books Joseph Giovannini scrutinizes LACMA director Michael Govan's failures and deceptions surrounding the museum's renovations.

"The smaller the museum, the greater the damage to the institution."

From the LARB archives: Joseph Giovannini on LACMA's remodel: lareviewofbooks.org/article/lacma-suicide-by...

I couldn't go to the LACMA opening but a friend sent this photo from the "incident report factory," as she called it. So long, paisley shawls, it was nice knowing you...

the lighting & awkward spaces are a way bigger issue than the concrete imo, which is just sort of monotonous

The walls look SO BAD to me but Team Patina is telling me they look good

I hope it’s better than it looks. But I fear starchitecture’s last gasp is LA saddled with a $750 mil freeway overpass, and the art arranged not by chronology or culture, but by selfie potential.

A chunk of the collection is in Vegas storage, and they’re renting curatorial office space. Yikes.

'L.A. has changed me,' says architect of LACMA's divisive David Geffen Galleries In a wide-ranging interview with architecture critic Sam Lubell, Peter Zumthor talks about the evolution of LACMA's new David Geffen Galleries, how L.A. changed his practice, and why certain criticism...

Also wasting scarce urban land next to a subway station on a single level ranch house.
"Also, let’s do the museum on one level only."
www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

An Angelino and an Englishman (cc: @ollywainwright.bsky.social) break a lance in LARA no. 2. Want to pen your own letter to the editor? Get in touch at editor@nyra.nyc.

nyra.nyc/articles/i-get-around