Pop Art is one of the most influential art movements since 1945 with a fundamental element of dialogue between design and art. Orange County Museum of Art is showing Pop Art Design (through April 2) the first comprehensive exhibition examining the inspirations and cross-references between art and design that continue to shape our society today. It features a large number of important works by artists including Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, and Richard Hamilton; juxtaposed with works by designers such as Charles Eames, George Nelson, Achille Castiglioni, and Ettore Sottsass; as well as extensive ephemera. 

With this variety of material, the exhibition demonstrates how design in the early 1950s anticipated later elements of Pop Art when both artists and designers explored the motifs of the emerging consumer society. Objects of daily use were transformed into artistic pictorial motifs and sculptures while designers, in turn, availed themselves of artistic strategies like quotation, collage, and irony to develop a new aesthetic for everyday objects.

The exhibition features approximately fifty works of art and eighty design objects from international museums.