Imagining Best Products, on view May 7 – June 21 at The Branch Museum of Design, explores the radical retail experiment led by Francis and Sydney Lewis, whose Richmond based company Best Products became an unlikely platform for architectural innovation. The Lewises were passionate collectors of contemporary art, often trading appliances from their own catalog for artwork, even as they found themselves building big box stores across suburbia. They began to ask: how do you bring art into the American landscape? They answered by inviting architects including James Wines of SITE, Robert A.M. Stern, and Stanley Tigerman to rethink the retail warehouse. Through original drawings, models, and photographs, the exhibition traces how that question sparked a creative response that helped redefine retail architecture in late twentieth century America.
