While most well-known for his awe-inspiring Handmade Homes in Chicago, Edgar Miller matured professionally as an artist just as the practice of modern graphic design was pioneered in the 1920s through the 1930s. The Fall Smash 2021 temporary exhibition and continuing virtual exhibition — The Timeless Modern — explores the evolution of Miller’s graphic design work, reflecting the revolutionary changes in media, messaging, and aesthetics of the time.

The exhibition showcases Miller at his most prolific, showing his incredible printed illustrations, advertisements, magazine covers, maps, posters, and wallpaper designs, as well as rarely seen pieces of his personal designs and ephemera from the Edgar Miller Legacy archives. On view is a true cross-section of modernist artistry, artisanal craftwork, and avant-garde style, exploring how Miller’s timeless modernism developed over the course of the early twentieth century to become a seminal part of Midwestern art and design. The exhibition also includes the inspired work of contemporary artists and creative professionals, including Hannah Dykstra, Sharon Bladholm, and Alexander Vertikoff.

Be sure to explore individual images of each original piece on display in the Interactive Exhibition Guide, and view the exhibition’s extended programs and presentations in the Extended Program Video section below.

Edgar Miller’s Graphic Design

Edgar Miller, born right around the turn of the 20th century on December 17th, 1899 in the remote town of Idaho Falls, Idaho, was very much an artist of the modern world. When asked what his first memory of art was, Miller would answer that his earliest recollection was notably that of a print ad he saw when we was four years old: a mural-sized reproduction depicting “Custer’s Last Stand”, which was being used to sell Anheuser Busch beer at the time.

The ad was not only emblematic of the young artist’s childhood in the remote landscape of the American West, but was also a piece of early mass advertising that had made its way to Miller’s view through the channels of a quickly modernizing world. The art captured within the ad also sparked his burgeoning creative talent with the notion that art and design had the unique capability of transporting its audience to places, times, and emotions.

Moving on from his picturesque upbringing, Miller came to call the Midwest his home after attending the School of the Art Institute in Chicago from 1917-1919. He would go on to hone his skills as an artist, designer, and craftsman, becoming well-known for his prodigious skills and mastery of dozens of media starting in the early part of the 1920s. Over the course of the next four decades, Miller worked from his own workshop and studio, as well as at major design institutions like the Jane Addams’ Hull-House studios, and at renowned local firms like the Iannelli Studios. Miller is known today for an eclectic style that transcends movements or genres. He developed a wide-ranging design vocabulary, drawing from a variety of timeless sources, which would come to define his own thoroughly and uniquely modern form of expression.