How a Philadelphia organization initiated a program to plan and create public art projects with the community.
Thomas Hine writes about American culture, history and design. His six books have dealt with such phenomena as product packaging, teenagers, fashion, interior design, and shopping. He has also contributed chapters to more than a dozen other books and exhibition catalogs, and served as multimedia editor of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. He was architecture and design critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer for 23 years, ending in 1996. He has also served as a guest curator or consultant to museum exhibitions in Miami, Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and elsewhere.
He got the inspiration for his first book "Populuxe: the Look and Life of Midcentury American" in 1978 when he visited Saudi Arabia as a Ford Foundation fellow. There he noticed that the Saudis" new houses incorporated many features of the exuberant, celebratory style of the America of his childhood. John Updike praised "Populuxe" as evidence of "a mischievously alert sensibility." His most recent book, "The Great Funk" (2007) is a sequel to "Populuxe," which chronicles the upsetting, and often liberating, collapse of America's post-World War II mentality.
Hine was born in Boston, grew up in Connecticut, and graduated from Yale. He has lived in Philadelphia since 1970.
