Movable Feasts and Changing Calendars

With its public reveal coinciding with Easter, the Eames Office organized Moveable Feasts and Changing Calendars as an exhibition for IBM. The focus of the exhibition was our history’s changeable holidays that do not fall on the same date each year, such as Easter, Rosh Hashanah, Ramadan, and the Chinese New Year. The exhibition explored how people, beginning with primitive societies, have used astronomy to organize their yearly calendars. One of the exhibition panels highlighted an important thought: “The recording of seasonal and astronomical reoccurrences is the beginning of written history. There was a calendar before there was an alphabet.” The exhibition included woodcuts, engravings, and a broad range of images—flowers, plants, animals, fireworks, churches, and eggs. It also featured graphic panels and interactive devices (paper orreries and a large calendar drum) that explored how these holidays specifically, and calendars in general, are linked to astronomy.