Art: Street Scene

Americans are so surrounded by signs —fidgety neons, blatant billboards and tricky traffic markers—that the messages are often lost in the shuffle. This week Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art is staging a show, "Signs in the Street," which it hopes will open the U.S.'s sign-weary eyes to just how chaotic the situation has become.

To illustrate the problem, the museum relaxed its standing rule against exhibiting anything of bad design, chose for its horrible example a picture of a street corner at 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue, near its own building. On or beneath one overburdened lamppost are six different signs (see cut) telling twelve different messages in ten letter styles and 21 sizes. Aside from the fact that this jumble is artistically jarring, the museum notes also that it all takes too long to read: a minimum of almost a minute.

In contrast, the museum put up in its outdoor sculpture garden a collection of signs and markers that answered both objections. One was a clean-cut, red-and-black London bus-stop marker that is functionally efficient and esthetically pleasing. So is an eye-catching, striped pointer showing the way to the Northland shopping center in Detroit. Among other examples of good sign design: the simply lettered yellow-and-red Shell Oil Co. emblem and the handsome, red-and-gold store-front label of F. W. Woolworth, which has been in use since 1885. The Woolworth sign is one of the favorites of Mildred Constantine, the museum official who organized the show. Said she: "Just look at those wonderful, round, juicy Os —like sculpture."