The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage

Center Spotlight

Stefan Sagmeister Gets Happy at the Institute of Contemporary Art

Austrian-born and New York-based graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister wants to know what makes us happy. He wants to know what makes him happy, too—which is why he’s embarked on a 10-year exploration of this major aspect of human experience. Sagmeister is well known for his award-winning album designs for influential musicians such as David Byrne, Lou Reed, and the Rolling Stones. He has also earned a reputation for provocative projects that straddle the line between art and design, often through vivid and eye-catching experimentations with typography. The Institute of Contemporary Art’s (ICA) current exhibition of Sagmeister’s investigation into the nature of happiness, The Happy Show, is supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative. The exhibition encompasses the entirety of the ICA’s second-floor galleries and ramp space, and is filled with typographic depictions of maxims and interactive displays, meant to explore happiness and offer insight on how to achieve it. Oh, and to make visitors smile.

SLIDESHOW: Click to see photos from the Institute of Contemporary Art’s current exhibition, THE HAPPY SHOW, an investigation of happiness by graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister. Photo courtesy of ICA.

The Happy Show is Sagmeister’s first U.S. museum show and the ICA’s first exhibition dedicated to the work of a graphic designer in the institution’s nearly 50-year history. In essence, the show is a prelude to Sagmeister’s feature-length documentary, The Happy Film, in which he attempts to increase his own happiness through meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, and psychotropic drugs. “The question I wanted was, could I train my mind to be happy, the same way one trains one’s body?” Sagmeister says in a recent New York Times article. A 12-minute segment of the film is currently on view as part of the ICA’s exhibition, alongside Sagmeister’s playful and didactic displays and installations. Included in the show is a sculpture constructed from sugar cubes, a neon sign that lights up when visitors ride a stationary bike, and a wall from which outstretched hands offer samples of Sagmeister’s favorite chocolates. A bank of gumball machines, each numbered according to a 1–10 scale of happiness, serve as an infographic-in-progress, as visitors each procure a gumball according to self-assessments of happiness. The film and exhibit are contextualized by findings and studies from a team of psychologists, historians, and an anthropologist.

While The Happy Show holds many examples of Sagmeister’s striking approach to graphic design, it is also a serious exploration of the human condition and questions of self-improvement. We all pursue happiness, but who achieves it? And how? As we await The Happy Film, slated for release in 2013, the exhibition serves as a generous glimpse into Sagmeister’s mind as he grapples with these questions. Former ICA Director Claudia Gould tells the Times, “I went in thinking I was going to be doing a project with a graphic designer, and […] I’ve realized I’m doing a project, really, with a writer and poet.”

To learn more about The Happy Show, visit the ICA website or The Happy Show tumblr. Watch a video of title shots from The Happy Film below, as well as an interview with Sagmeister at the 2011 We Love Graphic Design seminar, held in Copenhagen last October.

Center Spotlight Archives

March 2012: Pew Fellows in the Arts Move Forward at the MacDowell Colony
February 2012: Bryn Mawr College Revisits John Jasperse’s Groundbreaking Fort Blossom
January 2012: The Philadelphia Museum of Art Looks Back to a Decade of Zoe Strauss
November/December 2011: Pig Iron Theatre Company Takes Performance to the Classroom
October 2011: Our Class Comes to The Wilma Theater
September 2011: The Quay Brothers Take Inspiration from the Mütter Museum for Through the Weeping Glass
August 2011: The 2011 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe
July 2011: Announcing the 2011 Pew Fellows in the Arts
June 2011: Philadelphia Summer Music Festivals: Bowerbird’s American Sublime and Ars Nova Workshop’s Great Black Music
March 2011: The Philadelphia Irish Theatre Festival
January 2011: Heritage Philadelphia Program's "No Idea Is Too Ridiculous" Project
November 2010: Michelangelo Pistoletto's Cittadellarte Finds a Home in Philadelphia
October 2010: Announcing the 2010 Pew Fellows in the Arts
September 2010: The Bang on a Can Marathon Comes to Philadelphia
August 2010: Lucinda Childs's Dance at the 2010 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe
July 2010: Pew Fellows in the Arts: Justin Cronin, Jennifer Higdon, and Rafael Ferrer
June 2010: Museum Without Walls, Fairmount Park Association
May 2010: Leaving by Václav Havel at The Wilma Theater
April 2010: Wayne Shorter at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
March 2010: Philagrafika 2010: The Graphic Unconscious
February 2010: Mark Dion’s Travels of William Bartram Reconsidered at Bartram’s Garden