CHICAGO, IL.- Beginning around 1910, a group of vanguard artists working in Europe advanced the radical idea that art had a mandate to transform daily life, from silverware to postage stamps to buildings. This theory would eventually take hold in the wider world, where it merged enthusiastically with the demands of the industrial marketplace, the nascent mass media, and urban popular culture. This vibrant and critically important moment in east-central European modernism is comprehensively explored in Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life–a major exhibition on view at the Art Institute of Chicago from June 11 through October 9, 2011, in the Modern Wing’s Abbott Galleries (G 182-184). Focusing on six highly influential