An Architect, Designer and Universal Artist

In the summer of 2010, the Leopold Museum will be joining with Institut Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt to mount the most comprehensive exhibition to date on the oeuvre of Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867-1908). This large-scale retrospective is to present around 300 individual works by this architect and universal artist, thereby putting Olbrich's oeuvre into the aesthetic context of Viennese Modernism. The works on loan from public and private collections in Germany, Austria and the USA are to include furniture, textiles, drawings and watercolors.

MODERN FORMS AND LIVING ENVIRONMENTS
Olbrich is one of the most outstanding personalities in architecture and arts and crafts from the period around 1900, and he is closely associated with the development of modern forms and living environments. The hundredth aniversary of his death in 2008 provided an opportunity to devote renewed and in-depth attention to his extremely complex oeuvre, which ranges from architecture to interior decorating and garden design, and from applied arts to the design of industrial forms. An academic symposium held in July of 2008 by Institut Mathildenhöhe opened up new approaches to Olbrich's body of works both for researchers and for the interested public. The findings of the theoretical discourse which resulted, as well as various designs, plans and objects (some of which were discovered only during this process), are to be used to stage a comprehensive Olbrich retrospective. This exhibition will take place in Darmstadt and in Vienna, Olbrich's two main places of work, and will present numerous items from collections in Germany, Austria and the USA.
Olbrich’s body of works, which is exemplary for the turn of the last century, is still quite difficult to comprehend as a whole – despite the brief timeframe within which it was created. It has been 26 years since the last major Olbrich exhibition, which catalog has long since become unavailable. To this day, there exists no comprehensive monograph on the artist. Olbrich is viewed as the central figure of the reform efforts that took place around 1900, and he influenced and shaped the ideas of the generation that followed. Architects of the modern era such as Erich Mendelsohn, Bruno Taut and Le Corbusier took important impulses from the design elements that characterized Olbrich’s oeuvre.
Since many of Olbrich’s works were destroyed by war-related events, and since the documents on the architect’s work ended up being scattered to the most varied locations, the significance of this artist-architect – who died quite young – is not nearly as well anchored in the public mind as, for example, that of his contemporaries Henry van de Velde, Josef Hoffmann and Peter Behrens. Olbrich thus remains a “great unknown” who had an impact which is often underestimated.
Olbrich was a universally creative artist, an architect devoted to the idea, current around 1900, of the melding of art and life. The reconstruction of selected individual projects via original designs, odels, historic photographs, documents and objects allows the impressive richness of his ideas to be portrayed. In terms of architecture’s development during the 20th century, Olbrich’s creative potential is shown in his contributions to construction projects such as the “Gartenstadt” [Garden City] and the “Kleinwohnungsbau” [a complex of small apartments]. An important aspect is the “Lebensreform” [life reform] movement, a formative influence during the period around 1900 which Olbrich sought to support via design that was meant to encompass and harmonize all facets of life. With the presentation of areas of his work which have received only scant attention up to now (such as garden art), and via the examination of certain issues such as the actual way in which the artist collaborated with his producers, this exhibition will also break new ground. The cooperative effort with the Leopold Museum in Vienna, which owns the world’s largest collection of Austrian art around 1900, also makes it possible to show impressively Olbrich’s artistic anchoring in Viennese Modernism using important
works by artists such as Otto Wagner, Koloman Moser and Gustav Klimt.

To learn more about this exhibit, visit the Leopold Museum website.

From a young age William Morris developed an unusually strong sense of place, which he retained throughout his life. He felt compelled to create domestic environments within which he could feel at ease, and responded to the wider environment with striking intensity. His sense of place runs like a thread through each of the many facets of his life: design, creative writing, socialism and conservation work, each of which will be explored in the exhibition.

For more information about this exhibition visit the Blackwell Arts & Crafts House website.

Masterpieces of French Art Deco
Opened August 4, 2009
The Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Gallery, Lila Acheson Wallace Wing, Modern Art, 1st floor

The installation will include furniture by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Louis Süe and André Mare, Armand-Albert Rateau, and Pierre Legrain; works in glass by René Jules Lalique, Maurice Marinot, and Henri Navarre; ceramics by Émile Lenoble and Emile Decoeur; metalwork by Jean Puiforcat and Edgar Brandt; textiles by Paul Poiret; jewelry by Georges Fouquet; lacquer work by Jean Dunand; and the magnificent set of reverse-painted and gilded glass panels designed by Jean Dupas for the first-class salon of the ocean liner Normandie.

Visit the MET Museum Website

The Lewis Decorative Arts Collection in among the most significant in U.S. When the expanded Virginia Museum of Fine Arts galleries open May 1, 2010 one of the most significant public collections outside Paris of Art Nouveau and Art Deco decorative arts, spanning the years 1890-1935, will be on view.
Some objects from the collection never exhibited before at VMFA, along with newly acquired works, will be on display.

The Vigrinia Museum of Fine Arts Website

The 12^th annual Arts and Crafts Conference, focusing on “The Arts and Crafts Movement in New York City,” will be held from September 23-26. Events include lectures, guided walking excursions, and private tours of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new American Wing. Receptions will be held at Lillian Nassau LLC and the National Arts Club. On the final day, there will be a trip to the Newark Museum to visit the Gustav Stickley exhibition as well as the American decorative arts galleries and an outing to the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms. Please contact Initiatives in Art and Culture at (646)485-1952; Fax (212)935-6911 for more information or to register online click here: acteva.com. Information about the Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement exhibit from 09.15.2010 to 01.02.2011 at the Newark Museum can be accessed by visiting newarkmuseum.org.

The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement in Britain 1860-1900

Portrait of Mrs. Luke lonides, William Blake Richmond, England, early 20th century. Museum no. E.1062-2003.

April - July 2011

Admission charge will apply

This will be the first international exhibition to explore the unconventional creativity of the Aesthetic Movement in Britain (1860-1900). The well spring of the 'new art' movements of the late 19th century, Aestheticism is now acknowledged for its revolutionary re-negotiation of the relationships between the artist and society, between the 'fine' and design arts, as well as between art and ethics and art and criticism. Aesthetic sensibilities produced some of the most sophisticated and sensuously beautiful artworks of the Western tradition.

Featuring superb artworks from the traditional high art of painting, to fashionable trends in architecture, interior design, domestic furnishings, art photography and new modes of dress, this exhibition traces Aestheticism's evolution from the artistic concerns of a small circle of avant-garde artists and authors to a broad cultural phenomenon.

The exhibition will feature paintings, furniture, ceramics, metalwork, wallpapers, photographs and costumes, as well as architectural and interior designs. Included will be major paintings by Whistler, Rossetti, Leighton, and Burne-Jones. Architecture and interior design will be represented by the works of Edward Godwin, George Aitchison, Philip Webb and Thomas Jeckyll, among others. Art furnishings designed by these and others, including William Morris, Christopher Dresser, Bruce Talbert, Henry Batley, and Walter Crane will showcase not only the designers and manufacturers they worked for, but also new retailers, such as Liberty's.

For more information visit http://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/future_exhibs/aestheticism/index.html