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Collector Eric Brill amassed over 800 pieces of North American industrial design in the "streamlined" style first popularized in the 1930s. Now the Brill collection has been donated to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the resultant exhibit, "American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow," goes live tomorrow.

In the 1930s and 1940s, streamlining came to represent modernity, progress, efficiency, cleanliness and glamour.

The exhibition offers a fresh appraisal of the achievements of the style's best-known exponents--among them Walter Dorwin Teague, Normand Bel Geddes, Henry Dreyfuss and Raymond Loewy--and places them beside the contributions of lesser-known but significant designers.

A final section will illustrate how streamlined design lives on today in motorcycles, bicycle gear and furniture.

For those of you in Montreal, the exhibit kicks off with a free lecture by curator David A. Hanks at 2pm.