Alexander Girard's Imagined Worlds

Edited by Monica Obniski and Laura Addison.
With Essays by Laura Addison, Amy Auscherman, Nichole Bridges, Marzena Dluzniewska, Jochen Eisenbrand, Alexandra Lange, Saloni Mathur, and Katherine White.

The folk art and toy collections of midcentury interior architect and designer Alexander Girard and their display in interiors and exhibitions, including unpublished photographs of his final designed collection environment.

Alexander Girard’s Imagined Worlds examines a modern design luminary whose collection of global folk art and vernacular forms informed his expansive design practice. The book centers the Museum of International Folk Art, its displays and archival collections, and Girard’s Santa Fe years as a locus for the designer-collector’s wide-ranging practices.

Featuring my chapter, “All Hearts Are Full of Emotions: AG and Hallmark,” on Girard’s least-known corporate collaboration that resulted in a fabulous apartment, a 3D greeting card mural, a traveling nativity show, and a lifetime obsession with hearts.

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