In this presentation, Ignacio G. Galánwill share from his new book, Furnishing Fascism:Modernist Design and Politics in Italy(University of Minnesota Press, 2025).Along with the rise of Mussolini’s fascist regime, the interwar years in Italy also saw the widespread development of its modernist interior design and furnishing practices. While the regime’s politics were overtly manifest in monumental government architecture, Furnishing Fascism examines the subtler yet effective role of household goods and decor in the cultivation of Italy’s exclusionary sense of national identity. Interweaving design theory, architectural history, and media scholarship, Furnishing Fascism reexamines the period’s so-called minor arts to reveal the political entanglement of modernism in early twentieth-century Italy and offers valuable insight into the complications of cultural production under the auspices of authoritarian power.

Speaker: Ignacio G. Galán is an architect, historian, and educator at Barnard College, Columbia University. His work explores how architecture mediates power and participates in processes of inclusion and exclusion, focusing on residence, belonging, citizenship, and kinship.