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Exhibition Reviews
"Do It Yourself: Home Improvement in 20th-Century America." National Building Museum, 401 F St. NW, Washington, DC 20001.
Temporary exhibition, Oct. 19, 2002–Aug. 17, 2003. 7,000 sq. ft. Chrysanthe B. Broikos, curator; Ramee Gentry, curatorial associate; Carolyn M. Goldstein and Michael R. Harrison, originating/consulting curators; Eileen B. Langholtz, consulting editor; Pentagram Design Inc., J. Abbott Miller, James Hicks, Jeremy Hoffman, and Lisa Strausfield, exhibition design; Video Takes Inc., video production; Hank Griffith, exhibition coordinator.
Do It Yourself: Home Improvement in 20th-Century America. By Carolyn M. Goldstein. (Washington and New York: National Building Museum and Princeton Architectural Press, 1998. 109 pp. $17.95, ISBN 1-56898-127-9.)
Lecture series; film series; family programs; exhibition tours; sessions with This Old House craftsmen.
Internet: exhibition summary and photographs <http://www.nbm.org/Exhibits/current/Do_It_Yourself.html> (Sept. 12, 2003).
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In any suburb any weekend, the master of the house is apt to turn into his own handyman. He's painting the porch, patching a pipe, or building an open-air fireplace so he can roast weenies in the garden.
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| —Business Week, June 14, 1952 |
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| As soon as they entered the National Building Museum's exhibition "Do It Yourself: Home Improvement in 20th-Century America," visitors knew that they were in for a fun ride. "Do It Yourself" was an appealing exhibition featuring clever design, eye-catching graphics, and objects that effectively told the story of this fascinating but often overlooked segment of American history. The exhibit, which consisted of six chronological sections, traced the evolution of the do-it-yourself (DIY) movement in America from its origins in the late nineteenth century through its heyday in the post–World War II period to its most recent incarnations at the end of the twentieth century. |
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The phrase "do it yourself" did not appear in print until 1912, but the exhibit's curators traced the concept of home improvement as leisure activity several decades farther to the introduction of the first "power" tool, the treadle-driven scroll saw, popular during the 1870s and 1880s. As described in the exhibit section "Turn to Hobbies," this tool allowed middle-class hobbyists to try their hands at creating the popular decorative fretwork found in many Victorian homes. Other factors also contributed to the early growth of what would become the do-it-yourself movement. Between 1890 and 1930 home ownership tripled, providing more Americans with a reason to undertake their own small home-repair projects. Systems of distribution such as mail order catalogs and expanded hardware stores made the tools and materials necessary to complete such projects more available. The home workshop became a popular feature in middle-class houses, and plans for projects began to appear in new magazines such as House Beautiful (first published in 1896) and Popular Mechanics (1902). The emerging do-it-yourself movement gained steam during the 1930s and 1940s, fueled by new government policies that sought to modernize America's aging housing stock (covered in the section "Push to Modernize"). The most influential government program was created by the National Housing Act (1934), which provided homeowners with small loans for repair projects. Material shortages and government campaigns to "make do and mend" encouraged American handymen and -women to develop their skills on the home front during World War II. |
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