The idea back then was that good, inexpensive objects of modern design were social levelers, extending art and beauty into countless working-class and middle-class homes, improving people’s daily lives, encouraging commerce and innovation.

Spreading the word was central to the advancement of democracy and to the Modern’s core mission. Toward that end, “Useful Objects” did whistle-stop tours of the country; and repackaged, retitled versions of “Good Design,” among other MoMA design shows, traveled abroad during the Cold War under the aegis of the State Department, advertising the fruits of Western freedom and ingenuity.

The museum even developed its own version of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval: a bold, circular “Good Design” tag — the Chicago husband-and-wife graphics firm of Morton and Millie Goldsholl and Associates, designed it — which helped manufacturers move stock off the shelves. The effort was in keeping with MoMA’s earlier wartime edition of “Useful Objects” which had guided Americans toward well-designed household products that would conserve supplies of nickel, tin, copper and steel, critical to the war effort.

If all this now seems a curious role for an art institution to play, it was in fact extending a tradition the Modern inherited from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and movements like the Bauhaus. The Modern wasn’t alone. At one time, the Brooklyn Museum teamed up with Abraham & Straus, the department store, to organize far-flung anthropological expeditions and the production of new fabric designs. The early Metropolitan Museum offered plumbing classes and trained designers to make jewelry, lighting fixtures and soap wrappers.

The idea was that art museums born during and after the Industrial Revolution, unlike old royal collections, couldn’t and shouldn’t only collect masterpieces. They existed to marry commerce with spectacle for the explicit purpose of societal engineering, framing consumption in terms of public service, extending culture through the promotion of modern product designs. If most Americans had little patience for Picasso, everybody needed a decent can opener.