Published: 01.10.08

An Apollo mission space suit and films by Stanley Kubrick are among 300 exhibits to be displayed in a V&A exhibition curated by Jane Pavitt, principal research fellow at the University of Brighton based at the V&A's research department.

The first exhibition to examine contemporary design, architecture, film and popular culture on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War era, Cold War Modern: Design 1945-70 (www.vam.ac.uk/coldwarmodern) is the largest of a number of exhibitions curated by Jane Pavitt during her University of Brighton/V&A research fellowship which commenced in 1997. Joining Jane as a consultant curator in the exhibition is David Crowley, a design history graduate of the university and now lecturer at the Royal College of Art.

The period after the second world war was one of anxiety and tension but also one of great optimism and unprecedented technological development. The exhibition examines how design was shaped by the Cold War period against the backdrop of the battle between communism and capitalism, the advances of the space race, and the international competition to be modern. Concentrating on the years from 1945 to 1970, the exhibition displays objects from around the world including the USA, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Italy, France, East and West Germany, Cuba and the UK.

Themes to be explored include the immediate post-war period showing differing visions for rebuilding devastated cities and competing ideas of modern life; the space race and hi-tech triumphs; the revolution; and how Cold War technologies were used by architects and designers to create imagined utopias.

Other exhibits on display include a sputnik, paintings by Robert Rauschenberg and Gerhard Richter, fashion by Paco Rabanne, designs by Charles and Ray Eames and Dieter Rams, furniture by Modzelewski (shown above), architecture by Le Corbusier, Richard Buckminster Fuller and Archigram, and vehicles including a Messerschmidt microcar. A section on the space race and hi-tech triumphs highlights the first space mission by Yuri Gagarin aboard a Vostok space capsule with designs of interiors for NASA space craft on display.

Cold War Modern: Design 1945-70 will be at the V&A from 25 September 2008 to 11 January 2009. After the V&A, the exhibit will tour to MART, Rovereto, Italy from 28 March to 26 July 2009 and to the National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, Lithuania from October to December 2009. Vilnius is the European capital of culture in 2009.

The exhibition has been highly rated in the following publications:

The Times - 'Cold War Modern at the V & A Museum' by Tom Dyckhoff, 22 September 2008.

The Guardian - 'We too have such things' by Frances Stonor Saunders, 6 September 2008.

Evening Standard - 'Oh! What a lovely Cold War' by Ben Lewis, 19 September 2008.

Financial Times - 'Iron curtain-raiser' by Edwin Heathcote, 20 September 2008.