While untold quantities of ink are spilled on the sensational aspects of the art world — high-stakes auctions, celebrity artists, sprawling art fairs — scant attention is paid to the innovations that flirt with artistry but aim at utility. So it is important that the Museum of Modern Art annually highlights recent objects of design acquired for the permanent collection. There is much to marvel at from the largely unsung designers who spend their time thinking about the ordinary stuff that makes our lives a little easier and more pleasurable.

The 60-some objects in the Leonard Dobbs Gallery on MoMA’s third floor run the gamut from medicine bottles and wallpaper to furniture and fabrics. Most date from the last five years and are on exhibit at the museum for the first time. A central platform in the gallery is dedicated to chairs and seating, of which the most spectacular may be Mathias Bengtsson’s “Spun Chaise Longue,” an undulating cylinder made from a single thread of carbon fiber using a weaving process originally developed by NASA. Equally intriguing are Louise Campbell’s “Veryround Chair,” which looks like an outsize snowflake made from laser-cut sheet steel; Patrick John’s “C2 Solid Chair,” crafted from powdered nylon; and Greg Lynn’s “Ravioli Chair,” a comfy-looking kiss of furniture that should nicely cradle your backside like the exaggerated pasta shape for which it’s named. Italian foodstuffs seem to have inspired the name, if not the design, of Tokujin Yoshioka’s “Pane Chair,” which, like bread, was originally tightly kneaded and rolled and then baked in a kiln. The result is a gently rounded armchair that, according to the wall text, should feel “like a cushion of air.”

Many of the objects here reflect the ecological consciousness of our era. Some are made from recycled materials. Others take up little precious space or are designed to be biodegradable. Reiko Sudo’s airy “Green Fabric” is fashioned from cornstarch, while his “Tanabata” textile folds into tight accordion pleats. A homeless shelter created by Michael Rakowitz looks like a giant sleeping bag and was made from discarded materials such as Ziploc bags and packing tape. Called “paraSITE,” it attaches to a “host” — the HVAC outtake duct of a building — and costs only about $5 to make. It’s intended, the curators say, as “a conspicuous social protest, not a long-term solution to homelessness.” Nonetheless, it has to be a good deal warmer and more comfortable than a cardboard box.

Martin Ruiz de Azúa’s “Basic House” offers another kind of shelter, a tent-like, metallic polyester structure that weighs only a few ounces, folds like a handkerchief, and is kept inflated by solar power and the occupant’s body heat. At night, the “house” deflates to form an insulating sheet around its inhabitant.

The bullet-shaped “Airstream Bambi Travel Trailer” offers a more permanent and practical kind of housing, with an interior cabin that includes seating and a kitchen, bath, bed, and storage. It’s a sleek piece of ingenuity, the efficient and somewhat homely predecessor of contemporary RVs. Though it was designed in 1960, the trailer is included in the exhibition because it was acquired by the museum only a year ago.

Usefulness and economy are guiding principles behind much of the design here, but a sense of humor keeps things lively, especially in the wallpaper offerings from the studio of 2×4 Inc. “Prada Vomit Wallpaper,” a floral collage of cropped and pixilated imagery culled from porn videos, offers teasing glimpses of a butt here, a breast there. The studio’s “IIT Mies Wallpaper” is a portrait of architect Mies van der Rohe, who was head of the Illinois Institute of Technology’s architecture school; the image is composed of pictograms that depict different student activities. In its original setting, Van der Rohe’s mouth covered the sliding glass doors that form the main entrance to the campus center.

The smaller objects in the show, displayed in a large vitrine, are among the most engaging. There’s a mesh headscarf made from stainless steel, streamlined flashlights, and cell phones, and a nifty bicycle helmet that looks like protective headgear for an action comics hero. For footgear, that hero might consider the “Spider Boot Antipersonnel Mine Foot Protection System,” which resembles a pair of rubber sandals fitted atop spindly legs that end in suction cups. Regrettably, there’s no wall text to explain any of these objects, so one is left wondering the uses for a “sleep wand” or an “air glass.”

There are an amazing number of cool things to covet here, and once you’ve dismantled the tree and tossed the wrapping paper, “Just In” offers plenty of ideas for an early start to next year’s Christmas wish list.

Until November (11 W. 53rd St., between Fifth and Sixth avenues, 212-708-9400).