A new exhibition explores the frenzy for domestic designs launched by Nixon's and Krushchev's Kitchen Debates.
In the summer of 1959, then-Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stood in a model of American domesticity and debated the merits of washing machines. It was the first high-level meeting of Soviet and U.S. leaders in years, and it began in the kitchen of a model American suburban house in Moscow, intended to showcase the affordances of U.S. life.