Space-age bachelor pads, minimalist utopias for wannabe Cleaver clans, sleek love nests for wildly glam mad men - these still seductive images of all-American postwar modern design are given a new twist in the Contemporary Jewish Museum's "Designing Home: Jews and Midcentury Modernism."

Jewish designers, architects and patrons such as Richard Neutra, Anni Albers and Edgar Kaufmann Jr. get the nod by way of photographs, furniture, textiles, tableware and Judaica in what looks to be the first major exhibition of its kind, alongside lesser-known figures like textile designer Ruth Adler Schnee and graphic designer Elaine Lustig Cohen, now 87.

We spoke to guest curator Donald Albrecht from NYC.

Q: How did "Designing Home" come together?

A: The Jewish Museum thought up the idea, and I think they approached me because I've done a lot of exhibitions on midcentury architecture and design. They sought to put design in a social and cultural context. It was really a fascinating project: It provided, for me, at least, a totally new take on a subject that I know pretty well, and it was particularly challenging to figure out what the story was.

Q: What is that story?

A: Two things: Certainly in postwar America, Jews, in general, assimilated easily into the American mainstream and designers among them assimilated as well, so the architecture and design story is much a larger story. The second part is that postwar American architecture has the great advantage of Jewish emigres who come from Europe and bring Bauhaus ideas, so there's a push out of Germany and Italy to America's benefit because they brought a sophisticated modernism with them.

Q: Why did modernism appeal to them?

A: In Europe especially, modernism is free of the negative associations of history and a way to start anew. In America, being Jewish was part of your personal identity but not a part of your professional identity, and that was radically different from what was going on in Europe in the '30s.

Q: Did you look at the Schiff house in the Marina?

A: It's a unique story to San Francisco. You have a Jewish architect, Richard Neutra, who comes to America in the '20s for economic opportunity. Then the Schiffs come in the '30s and hire him to design this house. They bring over furniture by a Jewish Bauhaus architect (Harry Rosenthal), and the American-born Julius Shulman takes the photographs. You have all three generations, and the furniture has never been shown before. SFMOMA, as you know, is closed and they've had an embargo on their collections but they kindly loaned the furniture, which they got directly from Mrs. Schiff. That was all too good to pass up.

If you go

Designing Home: Jews and Midcentury Modernism: Through Oct. 6. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Tuesday and Friday-Sunday, until 8 p.m. Thursday. Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission St., S.F. (415) 655-7800.

Kimberly Chun gets crafty among the Craftsmen in Berkeley. E-mail: Twitter: @kimberlychun