American Studio Glass installation at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Photo by the author.

The year 2012 is considered the 50th anniversary of the American Studio Glass movement. The anniversary is being celebrated with exhibitions and events across the country, organized in large part by the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass.

The Milwaukee Art Museum has a terrific collection of studio glass, and we were thrilled to be part of the celebration. Along one wall of the newly-designed Kohl’s Art Generation Studio is a new installation that celebrates using glass as a medium of creative impulse.

The glass sparkles, tells an important art history story, and I hope that its visual beauty inspires young artists as they create their own artwork nearby.

What is the American Studio Glass movement, and what is this anniversary?

Harvey K. Littleton (American, b. 1922), Lemon/Red Crown, 1989. Blown and drawn glass, cut and polished, 15 3/4 x 28 1/4 x 31 in. Milwaukee Art Museum, Gift of Peter and Grace Friend, Mr. and Mrs. Wayne J. Roper, Laurence and Judy Eiseman, Dr. and Mrs. Jurgen Herrmann, Dr. and Mrs. Leander Jennings, Nita Soref, Marilyn and Orren Bradley, Mr. and Mrs. Frank J. Pelisek, Dr. and Mrs. Robert Mann, Burton C. and Charlotte Zucker, James Brachman, Mr. and Mrs. John F. Monroe, Mr. and Mrs. Donald Wiiken, Elmer L. Winter, Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Goldfarb, Mr. Ben W. Heineman, Mr. and Mrs. Norman Hyman, Janey and Douglas MacNeil, and Friends. Photo by Efraim Lev-er. © Harvey K. Littleton.

Fifty years ago, in 1962, Wisconsin artist Harvey K. Littleton (American, b. 1922) and glass scientist Dominick Labino (American, 1910–1987) introduced glass as a medium for artistic expression in two workshops at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio.

This was groundbreaking.

Littleton and Labino developed small furnaces and a glass formula with a low melting point, making it possible for individual artists to work with glass outside of an industrial setting. In 1963 Littleton taught the first glass-blowing class in an American college at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

This combination of events kick-started the American Studio Glass movement and introduced a generation of trained artists to glass as a medium for individual, creative expression. In other words, glass moved out of the factory and into artists’ studios.

The Museum’s installation features glass by both Littleton (like the Lemon/Red Crown above) and Labino that shows how they created glass not for a functional purpose, but purely for beauty and expression in color, form, and optics.

Fritz Dreisbach (American, b. 1941), Maternal, 1979. Blown glass, with multicolor inclusions, 11 1/2 x 5 x 4 3/4 in. Milwaukee Art Museum, Gift of the Sheldon M. Barnett Family M1991.2. Photo by Efraim Lev-er.

The installation includes artwork by glass artists Dale Chihuly, Tom McGlauchlin, Fritz Dreisbach (at left), and Howard Ben Tré. These mostly abstract forms display the technical virtuosity of their makers and the optical beauty of glass. We see wild color, trapped air bubbles, and creative shapes that are simply beautiful, with no mind toward utility.

To give a contrast to the creative advancement in the American Studio Glass movement, the installation also includes glass objects that are primarily functional rather than creative (even if they are decorative and beautiful). A pressed glass covered dish, lamp, and a gorgeous “lily pad” pitcher show the practical applications of glass, a medium that has been embraced for 3,500 years for its transparency and delicate appearance. Glass windows let sunlight enter a room. Glass lampshades protect a flame while letting the light shine through. Glass containers keep liquids safe without affecting taste.

While there is no substitution for viewing this artwork in person, the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass has shared some wonderful videos of artists making and speaking about their glass work, including Pioneers of Studio Glass, a video produced by AACG to commemorate the 50th anniversary of contemporary studio glass in the United States. And then, of course, you can see the fires and kilns and molten glass that we are unable to experience in Museum galleries!

For the benefit of our Blog readers, during the installation of the glass I snapped a few pictures that show details of the artwork and the care of our art conservation and technician team.

Here, the Museum’s objects conservator Terri White polishes the silver elements on a stunning Christopher Dresser designed “Crow’s Foot” Claret Jug (designed 1878):

Museum staff working on the American Studio Glass installation. Photo by the author.

Before objects were installed in the case, everything was removed from its storage box and laid out on a padded table. Everything was then inspected for condition. Below, a variety of the glass artworks await a quick cleaning by Terri White. You can also see in this image an object file folder that contains information and reference pictures about how the more complicated artwork (like nesting Chihuly glass) should be properly installed:

Museum staff working on American Studio Glass installation. Photo by the author.

Below the Museum’s exhibition designer John Irion and I work together to situate the objects so that they look good from both sides of the case:

Museum staff working on the American Studio Glass installation. Photo by Terri White.

Art technician John Dreckmann carefully arranges all the arching parts of Harvey Littleton’s Lemon/Red Crown (1989). The Museum has a paper template that maps out how the pieces are oriented:

Museum staff working on the American Studio Glass installation. Photo by the author.

After all the objects are carefully situated in the case, conservator Terri White applies small bits of “Museum Wax” to keep everything anchored in place:

Museum staff working on the American Studio Glass installation. Photo by the author.

The finished installation can be viewed from the long corridor that connects Gallery #15 (American Modernism) to the Gallery #23 (Contemporary Art):

American Studio Glass installation. Photo by the author.

Thanks to graphic designer Sierra Kortoff and design intern Nate Pyper for devising great little labels that include images of all the objects!

Mel Buchanan is the Assistant Curator of 20th-century Design. Mel’s curatorial responsibility includes interpreting, displaying, and building the Museum’s collection of craft, design, and decorative objects.

Duane Hanson (American, 1925-1996), Janitor, 1973. Polyester, fiberglass, and mixed media; 65 1/2 x 28 x 22 in. Milwaukee Art Museum, Gift of Friends of Art M1973.91. Photo credit John Nienhuis. © Estate of Duane Hanson/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

Duane Hanson’s lifelike Janitor (1973) is one of the Museum’s most beloved works of art. It generates curiosity on many levels: How did the artist make the sculpture so realistic? What does this photo-realistic artwork mean? What does he wear under his uniform? How does the Museum take care of this unusual work of art?

To that final question, “carefully and creatively” is the answer that the Museum’s Docents recently learned from senior conservator Jim DeYoung. The Milwaukee Art Museum agreed to loan Janitor to the Walker Art Center for the Lifelike exhibition, Feb 25 – May 27, 2012. In preparation for the artwork’s exhibition in Minneapolis, Jim’s conservation team turned their restoration attention and considerable skills to making Janitor appear in pristine condition and ready for travel.

The details of this restoration are fascinating.

Curious about how a conservator cleans 40-year-old human hair affixed to plastic? Hint: They don’t use Head and Shoulders shampoo. Read on to find out more!

First Jim explained to us how the overall condition of an artwork is taken in to consideration before it is approved for loan, or to travel. The condition affects how it will be displayed, how it will be packed for travel, and how it will be prepared for presentation.

Janitor leaning secured to a paintings cart in the Museum conservation lab. Duane Hanson (American, 1925-1996), Janitor, 1973. Photo by Terri White.

The janitor does not stand by himself; he has to always be leaning on something or braced. He’s an extremely fragile figure. Many contemporary materials are deceptively fragile, which seems non-intuitive because you usually think of plastic and so forth as unbreakable. The Janitor is made out of fiberglass resin, which gets very brittle with age. The body has a very delicate surface paint on it, and the janitor also has a lot of other additional aging materials (his clothing, the hair, his watch). We’ve known for quite a while that it was a priority for Terri White, the Museum’s objects conservator, to treat the janitor. However, with such nontraditional materials, our team needed to consult with other conservators who have gone down that path and worked on objects like this. That’s exactly what we did.

Working with the expertise of objects conservator Mimi Leveque (Massachusetts), the Museum’s conservation team studied object files that contained letters with the artist, previous photographs of the object, and treatment and experience of other Duane Hanson sculptures in other Museum collections. Jim described how he and Terri approached cleaning the janitor’s clothing.

While on view, Terri lightly vacuums Janitor frequently, but there still is a certain amount of dirt and grime settled in. The very first thing we had to do was address how or if to clean the janitor’s clothing. We thought that it might be possible to take his clothes off and throw them in the conservator’s version of a washing machine, but that’s not the case. We discovered that Duane Hanson constructed the Janitor so that his clothes cannot be removed.

Objects conservator Terri White carefully vacuuming a sock and pant leg. Duane Hanson (American, 1925-1996), Janitor, 1973. Photo by Jim DeYoung.

If you look at the way his hand is resting in his hip, you’ll see that the arm was probably attached to the shoulder after the clothes were put on. We would have to detach the arm if we wanted to take the clothes off. We even discussed the possibility of carefully cutting all of the clothing seams and then re-sewing them back on after cleaning, but that was determined to be way too invasive. In the end, we gave the entire sculpture a very gentle vacuuming with special consersation vacuums.

Janitor’s hairline. Duane Hanson (American, 1925-1996), Janitor, 1973. Photo by Terri White.

Terri started with the top, where the delicate hair was some of the most problematic of the materials. She was able to comb through it carefully and get a lot of dust and grime out that had settle in. Over the years some of the hair has fallen away exposing the glue line, which we have fairly carefully covered now. [As you can see at left.]

Jim shared that over the years, parts of Janitor’s outfit have sadly gone missing to the wandering hands of Museum visitors. Jim discussed the ethics of honoring the originality of the artwork as it currently exists, or honoring the intentions of the artist. For guidance, Jim and Terri turned to the words of the Duane Hanson himself.

We found a letter written in 1974 from Duane Hanson and it demonstrates that he was very involved with the owners of his artwork in their care and maintenance of these artworks. We read that Hanson was not only involved himself, but that he was eager to get other people involved, too. In this case, he had no problem packing human hair into the letter and instructing how to attach the hair with the gluing method and so forth. So this gave us a bit of a road map in what we thought was ethical to do to, how much latitude we had in caring for the artwork, and how much artistic license we had to move ahead with plans to bring the janitor to its original condition. Since the artist Duane Hanson is so longer with us to guide us specifically, we honored his will as expressed in the letters to let us make good decisions concerning the janitor.

Detail of janitor pockets. Duane Hanson (American, 1925-1996), Janitor, 1973. Photo by Terri White.

For instance, concerning the missing articles in the janitor’s pockets, Jim and Terri felt secure in following their own skills and instinct to find comparable materials to replace the thefted items.

While Terri was doing some of the stabilization and treatment, my job was to go shopping. I pride myself as being a hunter/gatherer, so I hit most of the antique shops around Milwaukee looking for late 1960s style pipes, glass cases, and pens.

Appropriate pens, believe it or not, are hard to find, as they all come with pen caps now. I found there are very few clicker retractable pens with metal clips like we saw on photos of the original Janitor, but I did find some in a junk drawer at home. I located a couple of pipes at Milwaukee’s Second Street Antique Mall.  We decided to take some artistic license with the pocket because attaching the metal pens onto the frayed edge of the janitor’s pocket was hard on the fabric. Though the pocket edge was stabilized, we also wanted to secure the objects so we invented a leather pocket protector for the Janitor that protects the cloth and creates some structure for the pocket. Though we hope for the best, if a visitor does tear out a pen, they would be less likely to tear the cloth of the janitor’s uniform. Conversations like this is where the design and restoration meets some of the aesthetics of the artwork. [You can see this new brown leather pocket protector at the photo just above.]

Wrist watch before, during, and after restoration.  Photos by Jim DeYoung.

The restoration of the janitor’s watch was very interesting. The Museum Docents learned from Jim that this was one of the first bits of vandalism to the popular artwork. The original watch put on by Duane Hanson was removed sometime in the mid 1970s, before Jim joined the Museum staff 36 years ago. Over the years, various watches have been used by Museum conservation staff, but it was time to come up with a proper replacement to the best of the Museum’s restoration abilities.

A black and white photo showed that the original was a white faced watch, so I went out to look for a watch and I found one similar at the Second Street Antique Mall to replace the pre-restoration black face watch. A watch expert looked at the serial number on the white watch from the Antique Mall and learned that the watch dated to 1969, so it would be an appropriate four-year-old watch for our 1973 Janitor.  The new watch is actually an automatic, meaning it doesn’t run on batteries, but it does require movement which the Janitor can’t actually do. So, the watch is operable, but in the Museum most of the time it will be stopped unless somebody wants to wind it constantly. I don’t have any volunteers for that!

The new watch was glued down to the existing leather, which is something we ideally would have replaced, but it is glued onto his arm and is disintegrating. Terri worked to reconstruct part of that band, but by far the hardest part was finding a replacement snap. There I was looking at Goodwill second hand shops searching through bins filled with 1960s, 70s, and 80s purses. I was drawing a lot of strange looks as I furtively looked for a specific type of snap. Finally there was a handbag with a matching purse inside with the exact same snap as the janitor’s watch. The purse was Pepto-Bismol pink! I swallowed my pride and walked up to the front with my pink purse, trying to figure out whether or not I should try to explain myself to the cashier.

Museum senior conservator Jim DeYoung with the janitor, while fabricating its shipping crate. Duane Hanson (American, 1925-1996), Janitor, 1973. Photo by Terri White.

Jim further explained to the Docents how the conservation team works with the crate assembly technicians to devise the safest orientation for moving the Janitor. For instance, laying the Janitor down on a soft bed was decided to affect too many stress points, so they traveled the sculpture “standing” [as you can see at right] and carefully decided where to anchor soft braces to keep the body upright in the crate.

Museum staff traveled with Janitor and oversaw the installation in the galleries at the Walker Art Center.

Jim ended by explaining in a great way how all these efforts are very detailed to a great end. Sometimes we do our jobs best at the Museum when you can’t tell we’ve been there at all. We make the paintings seem to magically and beautifully appear on the gallery wall, and we keep the Janitor looking as if it was 1973.

These are all minor details, but it is amazing how when it’s all assembled and in part of your mind you say “it looks the same.” But, in a way, I feel that  the artwork is more intact. To me as a conservator, it is important to have an object not look neglected  or look aged or worn. I think in this restoration of Janitor we have that sense of what Duane Hansen intended and I think he actually looks a little happier.

Janitor will be on view in Minneapolis at the Walker Art Center until May 27, 2012. He will then ship carefully back to Milwaukee, and the art installation team will be putting him back in the Museum galleries as soon as possible. Expect our favorite loafing custodian to be back leaning against his wall by July 2012!

[All italicized quotations are from Jim DeYoung, the Milwaukee Art Museum's Senior Conservator.]

Mel Buchanan is the Assistant Curator of 20th-century Design. Mel’s curatorial responsibility includes interpreting, displaying, and building the Museum’s collection of craft, design, and decorative objects.

Cyril Colnik (American, b. Austria, 1871–1958), Hanging Basket, ca. 1900. Detail. Iron, glass; 35 x 8 x 8 in. Milwaukee Art Museum, Purchase, with funds from the American Arts Society M2012.299a–d. Photo by the author.

Though the Museum’s mission is to present, in our official lingo, “four floors of over forty galleries of art with works from antiquity to the present,” I’m probably not alone among curators in getting most excited when we acquire and exhibit world-class artwork made in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This year, I was thrilled to work with our Museum’s support group dedicated to American fine and decorative arts (the American Arts Society, or AAS) to bring to the Museum’s Collection a fantastic iron hanging basket that was designed, made, and kept in Milwaukee.

While operating The Ornamental Iron Shop for over 60 years in Milwaukee, master iron artisan Cyril Colnik (American, b. Austria, 1871–1958) moved with changing fashions of his posh clientele in the finest homes of this city.

It you see stunning ironwork in Milwaukee, it’s probably by Colnik. To walk on the East Side, or along Lake Drive, is to enjoy a veritable open air Colnik museum.

And now, thanks to the American Arts Society, his artwork is also within the galleries of the Museum!

Young Cyril Colnik studied ironwork widely in Europe. As a student at the Munich Industrial Art School, he was sent to exhibit German ironwork at Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

Cyril Colnik, ca. 1890. Courtesy Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum.

After the fair, and reputedly at the behest of Captain Frederick Pabst, instead of returning to his home in Europe, 22-year-old Colnik moved to Milwaukee and opened The Ornamental Iron Shop.

Between 1894 and his retirement in 1955, the master ironworker oversaw a shop of up to twenty-five craftsmen making an astounding variety of artistic doors, gates, balconies, grilles, candelabra, and other fixtures out of iron, brass and bronze.

Milwaukee’s City Hall (1893–96), the Flemish Renaissance Revival Pabst Mansion (1892), the Italian Renaissance Villa Terrace (1923), the Classical Herman A. Uihlein House (1919), the German Renaissance Pabst Theater (1893–95), and numerous other grand buildings prominently feature his craft.

This Hanging Basket (pictured in full below) came to the Museum from a descendent of the original owners—Milwaukee’s Dr. Adelheim Bernhard (1861–1930) and Martha Steinmeyer Bernhard (1869–1912).  Martha was the daughter of Milwaukee grocer William Steinmeyer, whose grocery building is extant at Highland and Third Streets and now houses the Wisconsin Cheese Mart.

Martha married Dr. Bernhard, a German immigrant from Bremen, in 1898. After 1904, the couple resided with their four children and household staff in the two-story brick home pictured below at 1300 Grand Avenue (now Wisconsin Avenue) in Milwaukee. The home’s location is now an empty lot on the Marquette University campus.

Alonzo Matthews Residence (1300 Grand Avenue), Milwaukee, Wisconsin, ca. 1900. Courtesy Carl Backus, via The Pabst Mansion.

Family stories indicate that this Cyril Colnik ironwork basket originally ornamented the home, which was destroyed around 1960. The daughter of Dr. Adelheim and Martha Bernhard inherited the house, and took the ironwork with her when she moved north to Fox Point.

Cyril Colnik (American, b. Austria, 1871–1958), Hanging Basket, ca. 1900. Detail. Iron, glass; 35 x 8 x 8 in. Milwaukee Art Museum, Purchase, with funds from the American Arts Society M2012.299a–d. Photo by the author.

Since it cannot be in its original architectural surroundings, we are thrilled that this Hanging Basket is instead in the Museum to introduce Colnik’s ironwork to visitors. This example an excellent example of the fine workmanship characteristic of the artist, arguably Milwaukee’s most celebrated craftsman.

As you can see in the detail photos at top and at right, Colnik and his master craftsmen manipulated iron so finely that it curls like tissue paper at the tips of the flowers.

The L-shaped wall bracket that you see at right suspends an open basket from three iron chains, each with a Colnik’s characteristic spiral sphere ornament at its midpoint. (You’ll see this motif on other designs, too.)

The hanging basket is surrounded by a profusion of roses, clematis, tulips, and leaves, all executed in delicate iron, with a hanging floral finial at the bottom of the basket. A deep red glass vase rests within basket.

The artwork is currently on view in the American Art galleries on the Museum’s Lower Level, facing the “Chair Park.” It complements artworks by Colnik’s contemporary, Milwaukee’s interior architect George Mann Niedecken, including Niedecken’s design for a print advertisement for the C. Colnik Manufacturing Company shown right below.

George Mann Niedecken (American, 1878–1945), Design for Three Panel Sign for Colnik Manufacturing Co., n.d. Ink and watercolor on paper, sheet: 12 x 22 in. Milwaukee Art Museum, Gift of Mr. & Mrs. Robert L. Jacobson, PA2007.359.1. Photo by John R. Glembin.

If you’d like to see more fantastic iron, visit the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum, which has more than 200 Colnik works on view in their dedicated gallery. Or, you can see many of the works online in the Wisconsin Decorative Arts database.

Cyril Colnik, Hanging Basket, ca. 1900. Iron, glass; 35 x 8 x 8 in. Milwaukee Art Museum, Purchase, with funds from the American Arts Society M2012.299a–d. Photo by the author.

A related design drawing in the Colnik collections at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum:

Cyril Colnik, Design for a Hanging Lamp, ca. 1895-1920. Courtesy Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum. Available online at the Cyril Colnik Archives database.

Thank you to the American Arts Society for helping the Museum acquire this wonderful artwork–the first example of this celebrated Milwaukee craftsman’s ironwork to enter the Museum permanent collection!

Also thanks to John Eastberg (AAS Board member and Milwaukee historian) for direction in this research, and to Alan J. Strekow’s Cyril Colnik: Man of Iron (Published by The Friends of Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum, 2011).

Mel Buchanan is the Assistant Curator of 20th-century Design. Mel’s curatorial responsibility includes interpreting, displaying, and building the Museum’s collection of craft, design, and decorative objects.

Installation shot of Museum’s lower level George Mann Niedecken installation. Photo by the author.

Milwaukee in the early 1900s was a wealthy city known for its manufacturing—including beer, leather, steam engines, and metal machinery.

Milwaukee’s industrialists brought cutting-edge technology to their businesses, and a few brought cutting-edge design into their homes.

For a new look, they could turn to interior architect George Mann Niedecken (American, 1878–1945), who revolutionized the upper-class homes in Milwaukee with a step forward from the cluttered interiors of the Victorian era.

The Museum collection has a wealth of drawings, objects, and archival information about our hometown designer that famously collaborated with Frank Lloyd Wright.

Recently, to honor the addition of several fantastic new artworks to the Museum’s Niedecken collection, a new installation was put together on the Museum’s lower level.

What’s the story?

Young George Mann Niedecken ventured through turn-of-the-century Germany, Austria, and Italy, recording in his sketchbooks the design maelstrom of the Arts & Crafts Movement, Art Nouveau, and the Secessionists. Returning to his home in Wisconsin, the designer collaborated with Frank Lloyd Wright at the epicenter of the new “Prairie style” and the concept of that all parts of an interior—from rugs to drawer pulls—should harmonize.

One of Niedecken’s first Milwaukee commissions was in 1904 for Lawrence and Emma Demmer’s new home in the fashionable Water Tower District (2359 N. Wahl Avenue); the architects were the Milwaukee firm Buemming and Dick. Emma U. Demmer, a supporter of the Wisconsin School of Art where Niedecken taught classes, gave the young designer freedom to execute his most avant-garde project.

Installation shot, Lower Level, Milwaukee Art Museum. Photo by John R. Glembin.

These art glass Windows, shown above flanking the Demmer Vanity with Mirror, show the bold Secessionist geometry that united Emma Demmer’s forward-looking light fixtures, textiles, and furniture. To her Milwaukee contemporaries, Niedecken’s objects likely appeared shocking with their strong geometry and reduced surface ornament. (Compare this look to what you might see at, say, Milwaukee’s Frederick Pabst Mansion.) Mrs. Demmer’s new taste was a step into the future, beyond the cluttered interiors of the Victorian era.

The Demmer family’s legacy of supporting design in Milwaukee continues to today.

Earlier this year, the Milwaukee Art Museum purchased the Demmer Vanity with Mirror, a Frank T. Boesel residence Armchair and Dining Table and Chairs, and Philip Ettenheim residence Serving Table using funds from the Mae E. Demmer Charitable Trust given in memory of Lawrence E. Demmer. Larry Demmer, who passed away in 2011, was the grandson of Emma U. Demmer and continued her philanthropic support of arts in Milwaukee.

George Mann Niedecken (American, 1878–1945), Upholstered Armchair for the Frank T. Boesel Residence (Milwaukee, WI), ca. 1907. Walnut, walnut veneer, and original velour upholstery; 46 1/2 x 25 1/4 x 25 3/4 in. Milwaukee Art Museum, Purchase, with funds from the Mae E. Demmer Charitable Trust in memory of Lawrence E. Demmer M2012.296. Photo by John R. Glembin.

From this generous gift, the Demmer Vanity with Mirror, the Boesel residence Armchair (shown just above) and the Ettenheim residence Serving Table (shown just below) are shown in this new lower level installation with a George Mann Niedecken painting of the landscape in Spring Green, Wisconsin that is on loan to the Museum.

All together, these artworks hint at the range of Niedecken’s designs. We see designs for glass and furniture, his hand in painting and in an iron shop advertisement. We see Modernism encroaching in his flaring geometries (like in the shape of the chair above) and the influence of the Arts & Crafts Movement in many ways, including the featured oak surfaces like on the Serving Table below.

George Mann Niedecken (American, 1878–1945), Serving Table for the Philip Ettenheim Residence (Milwaukee, WI), 1911. Oak; 32 x 42 1/4 x 19 3/16 in. Milwaukee Art Museum, Purchase, with funds from the Mae E. Demmer Charitable Trust in memory of Lawrence E. Demmer M2012.295. Photo by John R. Glembin.

In 2008, the Museum celebrated the artist, his contributions to 20th-century design, and the phenomenal collection in our care with the A Revolutionary in Milwaukee: The Designs of George Mann Niedecken exhibition.

For more information on the Cyril Colnik ironwork and Niedecken design for a Colnik advertisement also on view in this installation, visit this blog post on the Colnik iron Hanging Basket.

Mel Buchanan is the Assistant Curator of 20th-century Design. Mel’s curatorial responsibility includes interpreting, displaying, and building the Museum’s collection of craft, design, and decorative objects.

Margarete Heymann-Loebenstein Marks, ca. 1925. Photo courtesy Bauhaus Archiv, Berlin.

Ever wonder about the details of developing an art museum exhibition? I have to admit, an advanced degree in art history does not directly prepare a curator for the loan agreements, budget constrictions, press relationships, and conservation concerns that must be negotiated and balanced along with telling a great story.

In order to break down and share what I think is a pretty fascinating process, I’ve put together a six-part blog post series that addresses the steps I took in developing the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate exhibition (on view September 6, 2012 – January 1, 2013).

Every exhibition should start with and keep at its core great artwork and a meaningful story.  For me, this exhibition germinated when I encountered a Bauhaus-trained ceramist named Grete Marks in 2007.

I’d never heard her name. I wasn’t a Bauhaus expert.

But I felt something for her teapots.

I was working as an assistant curator at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. Our team was putting together Subject to Change: Art and Design in the Twentieth Century, a survey that would showcase The RISD Museum’s collection and be instructive to students at the art and design school. We wanted to dedicate a section, therefore, to the German Bauhaus school (1919-1933) and its new scholastic approach to art education. The Bauhaus was the seat of the Modernist multidisciplinary movement to integrate handcraft, fine art, and the science of mass-production.

The RISD collection had several great works for telling this story–a Marcel Breuer chair, a Wilhelm Wagenfeld glass teapot, Richard Neutra architectural drawings–but there were no collection objects by a Bauhaus-trained woman or any examples of Bauhaus Pottery ceramics.  In a quick attempt to fill this gap, I noticed in a December 2007 Sotheby’s auction catalog a stunning teapot and footed bowl by the artist Margarete Heymann-Löbenstein-Marks, or “Grete Marks.”

Grete Marks (German, 1899–1990), Haël Werkstätten Factory (Marwitz, 1923–34). Footed Bowl, ca. 1930. Photography by Erik Gould, courtesy of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.

Using all the secretive curatorial research tools at my finger tips (read: Google), I quickly learned the outline of Grete’s story, convinced my colleagues that this artwork was perfect for RISD, and after many steps (similar to these blog posts detailing how a Museum goes about purchasing artwork at auction) was thrilled to shepherd Grete Marks into The RISD Museum’s permanent collection. The works went on view in the “Subject to Change” 20th-century art and design survey installation.

One work, the footed bowl, is pictured at right. Together with RISD’s teapot, it will be traveling to Milwaukee to be part of our upcoming exhibition–reunited and it feels so good.

For several years, I continued to add to my understanding of Grete’s training, artwork, entrepreneurial career and its political context. I compiled secondary literature, learned the whereabouts of her artwork in private and public collections, and discovered that there had never been an American exhibition dedicated to this designer. After moving to a new curatorial position at the Milwaukee Art Museum, I was helping to plan the annual symposium of the American Ceramics Circle in 2010 and took the opportunity to bring Grete’s story to that crowd.

The story I presented was the tragic tale of a forward-looking Modern artist whose great designs were deemed “degenerate” by the Nazi government. That audience, too, loved Grete’s artwork and fascinating life journey. The presentation became the impetus for the exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum, through the process I’ll describe in coming posts.

Here is the basic artwork story:

Grete Marks was born in 1899 to a bourgeois family in Cologne, Germany. She attended the Bauhaus and, together with her husband, later founded the Haël Werkstätten für Kunstlerische Keramik (Haël Workshop for Artistic Ceramics) near Berlin in 1923.

Grete and the Haël factory embodied the teachings she learned as a Bauhaus student from 1920 to 1921, under instructors like Johannes Itten and Paul Klee. Grete, an independent spirit, provided the creative leadership for the factory, which united modern design, quality handcraft, and industrial manufacture.

Grete Marks (German, 1899–1990), Haël Werkstätten Factory (Marwitz, 1923–34). Tea Service, ca. 1930. Milwaukee Art Museum, Purchase, by exchange. Photo by John R. Glembin.

In its ten years of production, Haël Workshop introduced a variety of tableware—including striking conical teapots (like the one above) and vases with expressionistic brushwork—to consumers across Europe and the United States. The promising young designer lived the Modern utopian idea that thoughtful art would improve society.

Today, we would call the Haël Workshop ceramics modern, stunning, or sleek.

But with Adolph Hitler’s rise to be Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Grete’s teapots were called “degenerate” and placed in a “chamber of horrors,” or schreckenskammer.

In the new political environment, Marks was guilty of being artistically vanguard, politically left leaning, and Jewish. In 1934 a Nazi agent purchased the Haël Workshop at far below its appraised value. On May 20, 1935, the propaganda newspaper Der Angriff slandered Grete and the Haël Workshop, calling the designs “the product of a degenerate and misunderstood functionalism.” The picture in the newspaper, shown below, compares Grete’s ceramic artwork on the left to the works made at the factory under new (Aryan) leadership on the right.

Nazi propaganda “Der Angriff” newspaper, May 20, 1935. Caption generally translates to “Two races have different forms for the same purpose. Which is more beautiful?”

Although the Haël Workshop was a victim of Nazi Germany, Grete was not.

She immigrated to England in 1936, but not without losing friends and family, including the death of her mother in the Nazi’s Sobibor extermination camp in German-occupied Poland.

Using her reputation and business contacts, Grete began work in England’s Stoke-on-Trent potteries in 1937. In these traditional manufactories, she held a variety of design positions, including her own named line at Minton & Co., but she never regained the artistic excellence she had attained while running the Haël Workshop.

Ultimately, Grete Marks’ legacy is that of an accomplished designer who dedicated her life to the pursuit of useful and visually powerful artistic objects. Her remarkable talent unveiled itself fully in her designs at the Haël Workshop, where she realized the utopian Bauhaus vision of merging good handcraft and Modern design with new modes of large scale, efficient manufacture. In many ways, Grete Marks is a true Bauhaus success story.

I am honored to share her history.

Grete Marks (German, 1899–1990), Possibly Haël Werkstätten Factory (Marwitz, 1923–34). Tea Service, ca. 1930. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Purchase: The Charlotte and Perry Faeth Fund. Photo: Jamison Miller.

In this “Making an Exhibition” series, I’ll address the next steps in taking this story and making it into a museum exhibition. The background work involves conversations with private collectors, trips to London and Berlin, meetings with registrars and press managers and development officers, think tanks with exhibition designers, lectures for Museum staff, and emails, emails, emails.

To read all five parts of this “Making an Exhibition” series, click on the links below. (The links will be updated as they are posted, so stay tuned.)

Part 1: The Artwork’s Story (August 7, 2012)
Part 2: Research (with Travel!) (August 14, 2012)
Part 3: Approvals and Loans and Email and Paperwork (August 21, 2012)
Part 4: Storyboards, Design, and Installation (August 28, 2012)
Part 5: Finally, Enjoying the Gallery (September 29, 2012)

The exhibition was organized with the cooperation of the artist’s daughter, Dr. Frances Marks, and is supported by the Chipstone Foundation, the Mae E. Demmer Charitable Trust, and The Collectors’ Corner.

Mel Buchanan is the Assistant Curator of 20th-century Design. Mel’s curatorial responsibility includes interpreting, displaying, and building the Museum’s collection of craft, design, and decorative objects.

“Grete Marks” display at the Jewish Museum Berlin. Photo by the author.

As I moved through the stages of putting together the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate exhibition (on view September 6, 2012 – January 1, 2013), I began by researching the designer through secondary literature and compiled a list of 417 Grete Marks ceramics and watercolors in institutional collections.

Those tasks I could do mostly from my office in Milwaukee, thanks to great library services and generous colleagues at other institutions.

However, to build relationships with curators for borrowing artwork, to meet with Grete Marks’ daughter Frances Marks, and to personally examine objects so that I could make informed decisions about which of the ceramic vessels we might want to request for loan to our exhibition, I needed to take a research trip to London and Berlin.

It was a tough job, but someone had to do it…

While researching in England, I made visits to “store” (Brit speak for “storage”) to see artworks at the Victoria & Albert Museum, The British Museum, and the National Museum in Wales. Those institutions have in their collections gifts from the artist herself, as well as from her husband, Harold Marks, and her daughter, Dr. Frances Marks (as do the Potteries Museum and the Museum at Wales’ Prifysgol Aberystwyth University, which I did not visit).

Grete Marks ceramics on view at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Photo by the author.

Visiting these collections allowed me to see how other institutions display her work, as you can see in the two photos above, showing displays at the V&A Museum and in Berlin at the Jewish Museum. After explaining my research and making appointments with colleagues at these museums, I was also given special access to closely review all parts of the objects. This allowed me to compare details, examine condition, and note details, including the factory marks such as those you can see in the image below.

Below the white sticker (with the V&A’s accession number) on the bottom of that teapot is the blue factory mark for Grete’s “Hael Norma” collection, a line of more traditional ceramics she produced in 1932 to appeal to a wider audience, while the Haël Werkstätten factory struggled to remain economically viable during Germany’s faltering economy and increasing persecution of Jewish-owned businesses.

Examination of ceramics with a curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Photo by the author.

In London, I visited Grete Marks’ watercolors, on consignment at the Abbott & Holder gallery, as well as a fantastic private collection of her ceramics in Brighton.

Most excitingly, I was honored to meet with the artist’s daughter, Dr. Frances Marks, to explore her collection of her mother’s diverse artwork made over the full course of her lifetime, and to hear first-hand accounts from the designer’s family. I had a long conversation with Dr. Marks, which I recorded on a small digital recorder. I not only heard a factual account of her mother’s life, but also had opportunity to learn (from the family’s perspective) parts of the story that they felt were often overlooked.  Dr. Marks also shared research material and family photos, like the newspaper clipping of her mother’s 1937 English exhibition shown below.

Research snapshot of a newspaper clipping from Grete Marks (then Margarete Loebenstein)’s exhibition at England’s Burslem School of Art, February 1937. Collection of Dr. Frances Marks. Photo by the author.

In Berlin, Germany, I had arrangements to visit storage and paper archives at the Jewish Museum Berlin, Bauhaus-Archiv, Bröhan-Museum, Keramik-Museum Berlin. This included more hands-on investigation of artwork, review of more watercolors and works on paper, additional secondary research articles, and (at the Jewish Museum Berlin), being able to review copies of Marks’ family restitution documents. The papers document the back and forth conversation between the family (and their lawyer) and German compensation offices regarding the forced sale of the Haël Werkstätten (in 1934), and range from the mid-1960s until financial restitution was granted in 1987.

Snapshot overview of Grete Marks works in Berlin. Photo by the author.

Approaching the Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin. Photo by the author.

I returned from my trip to England and Germany overwhelmed with Grete Marks material, but inspired to sort through all my images and notes to make the best presentation possible at the Milwaukee Art Museum. With limitations in budget and square footage, I had to make difficult decisions about which artworks to borrow, and therefore which parts of the story we could highlight. With the understandably high costs of art shipment and insurance, the exhibition budget did not allow us to borrow artworks from two “overseas” lenders. In the end, we have a loan agreement to borrow artwork from our colleagues at the V&A Museum, which means I was unable to ask for any of the stellar examples of her work in Berlin. I selected the V&A materials because of a few key artworks they had in their collection, like the vibrant vase with asymmetrical orange handles, and works from Grete’s Hael Norma line. I couldn’t imagine putting together an exhibition without those works.

With a basic plan in mind of what the exhibition could include, how much it would cost, and the details of the story as I personally wanted to tell it, the next job was to make the exhibition a reality at the Milwaukee Art Museum. I spoke to committees, marketers, educators, and donors making them appreciate the story as much as I did.

To read all six parts of this “Making an Exhibition” series, click on the links below. (The links will be updated as they are posted, so stay tuned.)

Part 1: The Artwork’s Story (August 7, 2012)
Part 2: Research (with Travel!) (August 14, 2012)
Part 3: Approvals and Loans and Email and Paperwork (August 21, 2012)
Part 4: Storyboards, Design, and Installation (August 28, 2012)
Part 5: Finally, Enjoying the Gallery (September 29, 2012)

The exhibition was organized with the cooperation of the artist’s daughter, Dr. Frances Marks, and is supported by the Chipstone Foundation, the Mae E. Demmer Charitable Trust, and The Collectors’ Corner.

Mel Buchanan is the Assistant Curator of 20th-century Design. Mel’s curatorial responsibility includes interpreting, displaying, and building the Museum’s collection of craft, design, and decorative objects.

“Grete Marks” exhibition committee formal proposal, front page.

In the first two posts of this series, I’ve addressed the origins of the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate exhibition (on view September 6, 2012 – January 1, 2013).  The exhibition went from my admiration of a certain artwork I didn’t know well, to years of background research to learn the context and nuance of the artist’s story.

In those steps, I looked at artwork, read about Bauhausian ideas, and traveled to Berlin and London to meet with curators and examine stunning teapots. For the next part of the task of making the exhibition, I mostly sat at a computer in Milwaukee generating forms and writing emails.

An exhibition goes from a curator’s idea to a museum reality through a series of approvals up the chain-of-command. To bring my personal research on Grete Marks into a real Museum exhibition, I first spoke with my curatorial colleagues and the Museum’s Chief Curator about the idea.

The exhibition idea was vetted through a round-table discussion where curators, the Museum Director, and the Museum’s senior management team work to form the upcoming exhibition schedule. We contemplate the staffing, costs, and logistics between those shows we’ll generate ourselves (such as Grete Marks, or Frank Lloyd Wright: Organic Architecture for the 21st Century) and exhibitions for which we partner with another institution (such as The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City.)

With our internal team on board, and a firm idea of what the show will include and its budget, each curator makes a formal presentation to the Museum’s Exhibitions Committee, a sub-set of the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Board of Governors. For my presentation, I prepared the document you see above that shared images of Grete’s work, told the outline of her training at the Bauhaus and the persecution of her designs by the Nazis, argued why it was important to share this story with our Museum audience, and proved that we had an idea of how much it would cost and how we could pay for it.

With a series of “ayes” around the table, the Exhibitions Committee formally approved the proposal at their September 2011 meeting, and the Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate exhibition dates were set for the 2012-13 exhibition year.

At that point, the curator’s work can almost be described as a split between tasks that advance the direct installation of the show (continuing research, setting the checklist, negotiating loans, balancing the budget) and preparing other staff for the their parts in the exhibition (raising money with the development office, planning for the press contact, training educators).

“Grete Marks” exhibition packets that were sent to other Museums to seek partners. Photo by Mel Buchanan.

I worked with the Museum’s Communications Department–mainly Public Relations manager Kristin Settle–to incorporate a few short lines about the exhibition into the Museum’s “long lead,” a document that goes to local and national news outlets about a year in advance announcing the Museum’s major exhibitions and programs.  Close to the exhibition opening, we put together a dedicated “Grete Marks” press release with clear and basic information on the exhibition, which you can read here on the Museum’s website. This version of the exhibition story is modified slightly in order to deliver concise “sound bites” and direct quotes that a newspaper could pick up.

For instance, I wrote this line in the Press Release, quoting myself:

“The Modern ceramics created within Marks’ Haël Werkstätten, with their machine precision, expressive brushwork, and attention to vernacular German traditions, show the Bauhaus teaching’s thorough influence on the artist,” said Mel Buchanan, Mae E. Demmer Assistant Curator of 20th-Century Design.

It feels very odd to write about yourself in the third person.

Another task along the way was selecting and procuring images that we could share with the press. Fortunately, I had a brilliant intern named Lydelle Abbott to help with this  project of securing image rights. When a magazine or newspaper wants to cover a Museum exhibition, we want them to have easy access to images that are “pre-approved” for press use. I personally am a bit of a control nut (perhaps all curators are), so I was very engaged in exactly what images of which Grete Marks artworks would be released to news outlets to tell the visual story.

Grete Marks (German, 1899–1990), Haël Werkstätten Factory (Marwitz, 1923–34). Coffeepot, ca. 1930. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Modernism Collection, Gift of Norwest Bank Minnesota, 98.276.122.1a,b.

In a world where images are so easy to grab off the internet, scan from a book, or pin to your Pinterest board, it can be surprising how many steps and complications are involved in properly securing high resolution images of artwork with copyright permissions. We approached the institutions that owned each object and arranged permission through their Rights & Reproductions departments to use the image for press purposes. They make sure we were sharing the proper credit line for the artwork (usually the fund or donor to the Museum–like the Norwest Bank of Minnesota on the image at right), as well as the photographer’s information. Additionally, you may have to go through the artist’s family or foundation, sometimes managed by a large group like the Artists Rights Society, to get clearance with the holder of the copyright.

I had to go through this entire routine again to get permission for images that we’ll use in the exhibition itself (like using a photo blow up of this famous Bauhaus educational graph by Walter Gropius on the wall of the exhibition) and later when I go about publishing images alongside my research in an academic journal.

About one year before an exhibition opens, the curator presents the story to the museum’s “program planning” committee. This group of educators, events team, communications staff gather to learn the basics of a given upcoming show, and then brainstorm different ways we can plan programs and events around its theme. For Grete Marks, we devised a 3-part lecture series about the plight of art in the era of Nazi Germany in cooperation with the Sam & Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies at UWM, along with a MAM After Dark highlighting female artists, a special tour for Museum Members, a series of Gallery Talks, a book salon, etc. For bigger shows, this is the chance for, say, the chef to start thinking of themed dishes for the cafe.

As a curator, this early “Program Planning” presentation gives you a great early in-house audience to test what parts of the exhibition ring clearly, and which parts of the message are maybe a little more difficult to present to a crowd. For me, it was during this presentation that I saw how including more information about Grete’s Bauhaus training would help visitors understand the story. I saw that I’d been using the word “Bauhaus” as short hand, instead of taking the time to carefully explain what the school taught and the influence it had on Modern art and design.

The Museum’s “MAM Insider”, fall 2012 issue. Pages 12 and 13.

Starting about six months before the show, as a curator you hit a series of deadlines for content for things like the museum’s website, any rack cards or collateral that will be printed, or a short article in the MAM Insider (shown above).

The most important process during the lead up to the exhibition is working closely with the Museum’s registrar Dawn Gorman Frank to arrange for the loan of artwork. The process of loaning artwork from another institution starts at least 1 year in advance, and often several years in advance for a major artwork that is highly “in demand,” like a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe or Wassily Kandinsky. For my exhibition, I sent personalized letters and a loan form to the director and curator of each institution from which I was requesting artwork. I explained the thesis of my exhibition, the value of the particular artwork I was requesting, and provided logistical information like the dates of the show and insurance coverage. Dawn followed up to provide records of our Museum’s facilities in terms of HVAC and security, and to begin estimating the cost for shipment and packing. The loaning institution reviewed our information, considered how the request fits into their plans for the artwork, and either approved or denied the Milwaukee Art Museum’s loan request.  Once approved, the registrars from each institution work together to discuss specifics of packing (building crates), shipment schedules, and sometimes the need for a courier to travel with the artwork. With all the information in agreement, each party signs a loan document that stays on file.

With all the foundation work laid to allow other Museum staff to advance with their parts of the exhibition (drawing in the press, raising funds, planning programs), as curator I moved on to the hands-down most fun part of my job. It was time to work with the exhibition designer to lay out and design the exhibition itself. Stay tuned!

To read all five parts of this “Making an Exhibition” series, click on the links below. (The links will be updated as they are posted, so stay tuned.)

Part 1: The Artwork’s Story (August 7, 2012)
Part 2: Research (with Travel!) (August 14, 2012)
Part 3: Approvals and Loans and Email and Paperwork (August 21, 2012)
Part 4: Storyboards, Design, and Installation (August 28, 2012)
Part 5: Finally, Enjoying the Gallery (September 29, 2012)

The exhibition was organized with the cooperation of the artist’s daughter, Dr. Frances Marks, and is supported by the Chipstone Foundation, the Mae E. Demmer Charitable Trust, and The Collectors’ Corner.

Mel Buchanan is the Assistant Curator of 20th-century Design. Mel’s curatorial responsibility includes interpreting, displaying, and building the Museum’s collection of craft, design, and decorative objects.

A “visual checklist” pinboard at my desk. Photo by the author.

Picking paint colors. Stepping under ladders in closed off galleries. Artfully arranging teacups. All are things I’ve done in the past few weeks, and all are entirely fun perks to a curator’s job. Beyond the fun, what I aim to do in this post is go a little deeper into the process of installing, painting, and arranging an exhibition.

In the first three posts of this series, I’ve addressed steps to developing the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate exhibition (on view September 6, 2012 – January 1, 2013), from idea to loan paperwork to marketing.

The next step of bringing this incredible story and artwork physically to the public were the conversations we had about the design of the gallery, because there are as many ways to display artwork as there are paint colors in the Sherwin-Williams sample book.

I know different galleries and museums and curators go through this process differently, but I was fortunate to be working very collaboratively with fantastic colleagues at the Museum and at the Chipstone Foundation. Working with exhibition designer Mike Mikulay, the Museum’s William Rudolph and I met together with Chipstone’s Jon Prown and Claudia Mooney. In several afternoon “think tank” sessions over the summer, we sat around a table literally strewn with images of the Grete Marks artworks that would soon be shipping to Milwaukee.

Our work table for discussing label themes and arrangement. There are photos of the objects on the checklist, but also other comparative material. Photo by the author.

In preparing for both writing the labels of the exhibition and the layout and design of the show, we talked and reviewed photos (shown above). The checklist of artworks we were borrowing was already set based on object availability and budgetary constrictions with an eye toward covering most parts of the artist’s output at the Haël Factory. But once we had all these pieces in our hands, how would they come together at the Museum? That’s what these meetings were all about.

We looked for visual connections.

We discussed the “big ideas” of the show, and which to emphasize.

We mixed in other Bauhaus artworks, and photographs, to contemplate secondary material we might use.

We asked:

Did we think it made more sense for a visitor to move through the exhibition chronologically? Or should the artworks be grouped thematically?

How much would we present about the artist’s education at the Bauhaus? How much would we say about Grete’s later career in oil painting in England? How much of a role would the Nazi campaign against “degenerate art” play in the space?

Mid-installation photo. Two photo reproductions used as supportive materials are leaned against the wall. With two framed artworks and an additional vase, the entire wall will make a composition showing the “expressive” nature of Bauhaus training. Photo by the author.

During this process, we decided together to green-light the inclusion of a small section at the beginning of the show introducing the Bauhaus educational experience. Looking at Grete’s designs strewn on the table, it became clear that even though Grete only studied at the school for one year, she applied the teachings in very direct way. We saw Bauhaus color theory, form studies, and expressiveness emerge from our groupings, and those became three sub-sections of the exhibition.

These discussions led us to the flow of the space. We have an introduction about the Bauhaus, a section examining the Bauhaus influence on her work, a section showing Grete as a successful designer and entrepreneur with the Haël Workshop, a section on the Nazi persecution of “degenerate art”, and then the continuation of Grete’s career in England.

Printed mock-ups of the wall labels for the Grete Marks exhibition. Photo by the author.

Knowing how the story would unfold physically meant I could start writing label copy to provide the details, context, and thesis appropriately. I spent one weekend with lattes and The Black Keys writing the wall panels, and then shared my draft with colleagues at the Museum and Chipstone. Edits and suggestions were incorporated, we cut out about 30% of the text, and then a final draft went to the Museum’s editor. With her final edits in place, the text was handed over to the exhibition designer Mike Mikulay. He formatted them with the sizes, fonts, and colors matching the look of the show. I had one more chance to review the text in to-scale mock-ups (shown at right), before the files went to the printer.

A key point in our think tank discussions became the design of the transition between the Wiemar Republic world of artistic promise for Grete, and the Nazi environment where she was persecuted and her art was called “degenerate.” I wanted the exhibition to feel different, to perhaps be visually darker, as this part of the story unfolded. However, I also didn’t want the exhibition to end on that negative note. As we wrote in the labels, “While the Haël Workshop was a victim of Nazi Germany, Grete was not.”

Mike Mikulay came up with a beautiful exhibition design solution where you move from factory section to a black walled section (“degenerate art”) with a sharp diagonal line piercing the space, and an ominous quote about the artistic judgement of the Führer. But you then turn to a lighter blue section, where you see Grete’s continued career in England.

Picking paint colors also happened sometime during all this discussion. Mike, the designer, turned to a stack of Bauhaus books for inspiration, looking at period display technique and color palettes. We encountered several examples of paint schemes that created overlapping and intersecting planes of various neutrals (cream, gray, light blue, white), accented with pops of red and black. This is mostly clearly shown in the photo below, which was designer Peter Keler’s paint scheme for photographer László Moholy‑Nagy’s studio at the Bauhaus.

I carried around this image telling friends and colleagues, “It’ll look like this!”:

Peter Keler, Design for the Moholy-Nagy Atelier, Sheet 1, 1924.

Here is a photo of the space during the painting stage, and you can see a bit of how the colors compare to the Keler design above:

Mid-installation of “Grete Marks: When Modern was Degenerate”. Photo by Kristin Settle.

The Bauhaus itself had several exhibitions of its work. The chaise lounge we display on a diagonal platform was from a Bauhaus exhibition, and we had fun matching a few tea service arrangements to be like Grete’s own promotional material at the Bauhaus.

Here is an example of Grete’s arrangement of her own work in a Haël Workshop advertisement from around 1930:

Hael Workshop promotional materials, ca. 1930.

And below is a mid-installation image of our arrangement of a tea service in the Milwaukee Art Museum’s collection (aqua) and the same pattern that we have on loan from the collection at the Dallas Museum of Art (yellow and aqua).

Mid-installation photo showing me discuss with Mike Mikulay the tea service arrangement in Grete Marks. We made modifications after this photo was taken. Photo by Kristin Settle.

The photos below record some of the steps along the way toward installation design, in no particular order.

Below is an image that I snapped when I visited the works on paper in the Museum’s Herzfeld Foundation Print, Drawing, and Photography Study Center. I had preselected these Bauhaus-related Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Vassily Kandinsky and László Moholy‑Nagy artworks from our database and conversations with my curatorial colleagues. Because the fragility of works on paper means they can only be “on view” for about 1 month to every 1 year they are in storage, I also consulted with conservation colleagues and the museum registrar to make certain that the works I’m using hadn’t been shown recently, or were scheduled to be used in any exhibitions in the next few years. Mike and I met with the conservation department about framing the works, selecting appropriate materials that matched our exhibition design and complemented the artwork. Here is the Museum’s Collections Manager of Works on Paper, Tina Schinabeck, sharing the artworks in person with us:

Tina Schinabeck sharing works on paper with the exhibition designer and me. Photo by the author.

Below is an image of the Museum’s Decorative Arts Gallery in its “raw” state. The art installation team first removes the artwork from the previous exhibition, which meant de-installing Face Jugs: Art and Ritual in 19th-Century South Carolina and preparing it for travel to the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina. They then arrange and build the walls to the new show’s orientation, as well as spackle and prepare the walls for painting.

The Museum’s Decorative Arts gallery emptied of artwork. Photo by the author.

Below the Museum’s A/V Technician installs a video projector in the exhibition. Once the video is aligned, the shape of the box is traced perfectly and then the area is painted with a white “video paint” in lieu of a screen:

The Museum’s A/V tech Ted Brusubardis installs video equipment. Photo by the author.

Next time, we’ll look at everything that happens surrounding the opening of the exhibition.

To read all six parts of this “Making an Exhibition” series, click on the links below. (The links will be updated as they are posted, so stay tuned.)

Part 1: The Artwork’s Story (August 7, 2012)
Part 2: Research (with Travel!) (August 14, 2012)
Part 3: Approvals and Loans and Email and Paperwork (August 21, 2012)
Part 4: Storyboards, Design, and Installation (August 28, 2012)
Part 5: Finally, Enjoying the Gallery (September 29, 2012)

The exhibition was organized with the cooperation of the artist’s daughter, Dr. Frances Marks, and is supported by the Chipstone Foundation, the Mae E. Demmer Charitable Trust, and The Collectors’ Corner.

Mel Buchanan is the Assistant Curator of 20th-century Design. Mel’s curatorial responsibility includes interpreting, displaying, and building the Museum’s collection of craft, design, and decorative objects.

Installation shot “Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate.” Photo by the author.

Well, that was a whirl! For any of you that follow these blog posts in a timely manner, you’ll know (and one of you even pointed out to me in a gallery talk!) that I ambitiously scheduled two “Making an Exhibition”  blog posts for myself on the week of and week after the Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate exhibition opened.

Mistake. So, here I am, three weeks tardy to my original plans, finding an afternoon to recap the excitement of putting together the exhibition in its final week, celebrating the opening of the exhibition, and then sharing it with tours and reporters.

I am thrilled with how the beautiful artwork and tremendous story unfold in our exhibition. I am happy to report that we had a great crowd at our opening night. And I have been honored to share this story with more than one reporter, who had very lovely things to say about our exhibition in the press.

Here are a few things that happened.

A Last Minute Change in Installation

On the Friday before the exhibition opened, everything was coming together swimmingly, so we had the luxury of making on-the-fly improvements. Giving credit where credit is due, Jon Prown, Director of the Chipstone Foundation, had a terrific suggestion.

Installation shot of “Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate.” Photo by the author

In the area of the exhibition where we show Grete’s artwork in the context of her Bauhaus education, I posit the thesis that her Haël Workshop ceramics are fundamentally tied to the Basic Course (first year) at the art school. Groupings on color theory, form, and expression tie her ceramics to teachings by Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, and Wassily Kandinsky. At right, you can see the installation case with Grete’s aqua and blue striped teapot (analogous colors) viewed with Itten’s Color Star.

In the section exploring the concept of “expression” (which the Bauhaus defined as the freedom to be creative), which you can see mid-installation in this earlier blog post, we intended to show two fantastic T. Lux Feininger photographs of Bauhaus students practicing yoga and playing soccer. We meant for these photos to represent action. Honestly, it wasn’t working. We were missing the critical motion and emotion of the process of creating abstract, Modern art that we really wanted to get across. Sport wasn’t equaling freedom in the way I intended.

Then Jon Prown found this video.  We reorganized the wall, moved a Kandinsky print, called in the Museum’s A/V Technician, Ted Brusubardis, and included it with a few days to go before exhibition opening.

The motion of Kandinsky’s hand in this 1926 Berlin gallery video, combined with a stunning Kandinsky woodblock print, concisely displayed our intended point that Bauhaus students like Grete learned formal art theory, and then released their emotions through action to create meaningful abstract artwork.

Below is the result of this wall, showing the Museum’s Kandinsky print compared to Grete’s ceramics, with the action of Kandinsky’s hand above.

Installation shot of “Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate.” Photo by the author.

And what happened to those gorgeous T. Lux Feininger photographic reproductions we had already produced for the exhibition? They’re in my office:

Photographic reproductions that were not used in “Grete Marks” installation. Photo by the author.

The Opening of the Exhibition

We were thrilled and honored that Grete Marks’ daughter, Dr. Frances Marks, joined us from London to celebrate the opening of the exhibition. Dr. Marks participated in interviews with press, joined sponsors on a special tour of the exhibition, and then answered questions during our opening public celebration on September 6.

Here is Dr. Marks answering questions and sharing first-hand stories about her mother’s artwork and story:

Dr. Frances Marks answering questions about her mother’s artwork at the opening of “Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate” with curator Mel Buchanan. Photo by Liz Siercks.

The opening celebration included a private tour for sponsors of the exhibition:

Opening of “Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate.” Photo by Liz Siercks.

Opening of “Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate.” Photo by Liz Siercks.

A public lecture in Lubar Auditorium included the formal presentation of the story by me, and then the Question and Answer session with Dr. Marks. We celebrated afterwards with a reception sponsored by the Museum’s American Arts Society.

Opening of “Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate.” Photo by Liz Siercks.

Opening of “Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate.” Photo by Liz Siercks.

Press

On the day the exhibition opened, the Museum’s Public Relations Manager, Kristin Settle, set up a series of interviews for Dr. Frances Marks and me. Ideally, the press coverage will continue through the run of the exhibition.

You can see our story as interpreted through the reporters by reading what Express Milwaukee says about it here, and OnMilwaukee‘s coverage of the exhibition here, and here for a thoughtful article at the Third Coast Digest. Time Out Chicago made the exhibition one of their Critic’s Picks.

Milwaukee’s WMSE 91.7FM station invited me in to the studio to speak about the exhibition live on the radio. You can listen to the segment here at their archives in the September 10, 2012 show. The recording is 3 hours long; the interview about Grete Marks starts at 59:55 and ends at 1:17:50.

Programming

Last but not least, through the run of the exhibition, there are many ways to enjoy the exhibition through lectures and programming:

Gallery Talks with me on Tues, Oct 23, Nov 13, Dec 4, 1:30 pm, and at 8:00pm on the September (Sept 21) and November (Nov 16) MAM After Dark events.

Film Series Thursdays, 6:15 pm, Lubar Auditorium
All three films are free for Target Free First Thursdays. Each film is presented with a talkback in collaboration with the Sam & Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. 

Oct 4 | Eyewitness (1999)
This Academy Award–nominated short film documents the hidden art and lives of artists in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. Talkback with Ruth Schwertfeger, professor of German, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

Nov 1 | The Rape of Europa (2006)
A documentary that examines Nazi Germany’s plundering of Europe’s great works of art during World War II, and Allied efforts to minimize the damage. Talkback with Winson Chu, assistant professor of history, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

Dec 6 | The Train (1964)
The Train is set in 1944, when a German colonel loads a train with French art treasures to send to Germany, and the Resistance must stop it without damaging the cargo. Talkback with Carl Bogner, senior film lecturer, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and director of Milwaukee’s LGBT Film & Video Festival.

Book Salon Discussion of The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal. Sat, Oct 6, 10:30 am

The Finished Installation

Though I hope most of you reading this are able to come enjoy our exhibition in person, I’ve captured a few snapshots of the installation to share here. Soon, we’ll have professional photography, but I wasn’t patient enough to hold this blog post off until then!

Installation shot of “Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate.” Photo by the author.

Installation shot of “Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate.” Photo by the author.

Installation shot of “Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate.” Photo by the author.

To read all six five parts of this “Making an Exhibition” series, click on the links below.

Part 1: The Artwork’s Story (August 7, 2012)
Part 2: Research (with Travel!) (August 14, 2012)
Part 3: Approvals and Loans and Email and Paperwork (August 21, 2012)
Part 4: Storyboards, Design, and Installation (August 28, 2012)
Part 5: Press, Opening Lectures, and Cheese Cubes (September 4, 2012) * Note, never schedule yourself a blog post due on the week you open an exhibition! *
Part 6: Finally, Enjoying the Gallery (September 28, 2012)

The exhibition was organized with the cooperation of the artist’s daughter, Dr. Frances Marks, and is supported by the Chipstone Foundation, the Mae E. Demmer Charitable Trust, and The Collectors’ Corner.

Mel Buchanan is the Assistant Curator of 20th-century Design. Mel’s curatorial responsibility includes interpreting, displaying, and building the Museum’s collection of craft, design, and decorative objects.

Milwaukee County War Memorial Center. Image courtesy http://www.warmemorialcenter.org.

Though the soaring wings of the dramatic Santiago Calatrava building sometimes steal the show, the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Quadracci Pavilion is just one of two internationally significant architectural gems here on the Museum campus.

The other is the bold Saarinen masterpiece 1957 Milwaukee County War Memorial Center.

Modernist architect Eero Saarinen (American, b. Finland 1910–1961) is known for dramatic design accomplishments like the St. Louis Gateway Arch (1965), JFK Airport’s TWA Flight Center terminal (1962), and the iconic “Tulip chair” (1955). He took over the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center commission at the death of his father, Eliel Saarinen (Finnish, 1873–1950). The designs called for an arts complex that would “Honor the Dead by Serving the Living,” including a museum, performing arts center, and veterans’ memorial.

On the western facade of Saarinen’s Modernist concrete, steel, and glass floating cruciform is a purple and blue tile mosaic. You probably see this mural best when driving toward the building on Mason Street.

I had been working in this stunning building for several years before I finally paused to ask: What is that mosaic? What do the letters mean? Who is the artist?

Eero Saarinen recommended Wisconsin artist Edmund D. Lewandowski (American, 1914–1998) to provide the ornamental mosaic mural for the city-facing side of the War Memorial Center. In 1957, the finished building was still awaiting the final artwork, its five panels blank, as you can see in the image below from the Saarinen architectural office archives at Yale University. (On the 1957 Veteran’s Day opening celebration of the Saarinen building, these panels were hung with patriotic bunting.)

Front and side views of the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center prior to the installation of the mural, 1957. Eero Saarinen collection, 1880-2004 (inclusive), 1938-1962 (bulk). Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University.

Lewandowski, a Milwaukee native, is recognized as an important second generation Precisionist artist. “Precisionism” is not so much a formal art movement, but rather a word used to describe the common look and theme of a group of American artists that emerged between World War I and World War II. (Lewandowski is “second generation” because he worked in the style about twenty years later.)  From the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,  the Precisionists “began experimenting with a highly controlled approach to technique and form. They consistently reduced their compositions to simple shapes and underlying geometrical structures, with clear outlines, minimal detail, and smooth handling of surfaces.” Charles Sheeler and Joseph Stella are well known artists of the Precisionist style.

Often, as is the case with Lewandowski, Precisionist artworks celebrate industrial and agricultural history. Stella famously painted the Brooklyn Bridge; Lewandowski painted a Milwaukee brewery.

The Milwaukee Art Museum Collection includes ten Lewandowski artworks, including Wisconsin Ore Freighter painting of 1948 shown below. Wisconsin Ore Freighter is beautifully flat, has sharp detailed outlines, and celebrates the geometric and colorful beauty of the working cargo vessels that ship millions of tons of ore across the Great Lakes.

Edmund Lewandowski (American, 1914–1998), Wisconsin Ore Freighter, 1948. Oil on canvas; 42 x 30 3/4 in. Milwaukee Art Museum, Gift of Gimbel Bros. M1959.29. Photo credit Larry Sanders. © Estate of Edmund Lewandowski.

From 1931 to 1934, Lewandowski attended Milwaukee’s Layton School of Art (the predecessor of MIAD, Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design). In the late 1930s, he was a public school teacher and an artist with the Federal Art Project, and then served from 1942 to 1946 in the US Air Force, where he made maps and camouflage during World War II. Lewandowski returned to Layton as a teacher from 1947 to 1949, and was its director from 1954 to 1972.

Working on installation of Allen Bradley mosaic. Edmund Lewandowski Website, Flint Institute of Arts.

During the artist’s long career, Lewandowski experimented with a variety of media, including glass and tile in his mosaic murals, like the one on the War Memorial Center. He produced eight major mosaics between 1953 and 1979—including ones at Marquette University, the Allen-Bradley Company Building in Milwaukee, and the Flint Institute of Arts in Michigan.

You can see images of all three mosaics on a website created by the Flint Institute of Arts for their 2010 exhibition Edmund Lewandowski: Precisionism and Beyond.

Lewandowski’s mural here at the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center was unveiled to the public on Veteran’s Day in 1959, two years after the building’s 1957 completion.

The War Memorial Center mosaic uses more than one million pieces of glass and marble. The slightly-abstracted Roman numerals, in shades of purple, blue, and rich black, are the beginning and ending dates of the U.S. involvement in the Second World War and the Korean War. MCMXLI (1941) through MCMXLV (1945) refers to World War II, and MCML (1950) through MCMLIII (1953) refers to the Korean War.

Lewandowski mosaic mural on War Memorial Center. Image from flickr user chicagogeek.

The way to read the mural’s depiction of the dates is this, from left:

Panel 1, 2, and 3) M, C, and M, for the first three roman numerals for all four dates. MCM is 1900.

Panel 4) XLI for 41, and the L for 50. These represent the two starting dates, 1941 and 1950 of the United States involvement in WWII and the Korean War.

Panel 5) V for 5 and III for 3 (referring back to panel 4 for the XL to make XLV and using previous L for LIII). This gives you the two ending dates, 1945 and 1953 for the end of the two wars.

When constructed, this artwork was not only the largest public art commission in Wisconsin’s history, but it was also the largest outdoor mosaic sculpture in America.

In addition to this high-profile 1,800 square foot piece, Lewandowski was later commissioned for the 20th anniversary of the building in 1977. These two mosaic tiles, installed above the reflecting pool in the inner courtyard of the War Memorial on the second floor, symbolize the signs for the five branches of the armed forces–Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard all blended together.

Lewandowski 1977 mosaics at War Memorial Center. Photo by the author.

By the way, an additional bit of Lewandowski information can be found here at Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel arts critic Mary Louise Schumacher’s “Art City” blog. She wrote about the artist when Lewandowski’s well-known Three Kings painting was selected to run on the cover of the newspaper on Christmas Day in 2010.

Front view of the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center with mural. Eero Saarinen collection, 1880-2004 (inclusive), 1938-1962 (bulk). Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University.

Mel Buchanan is the Assistant Curator of 20th-century Design. Mel’s curatorial responsibility includes interpreting, displaying, and building the Museum’s collection of craft, design, and decorative objects.

Milwaukee County War Memorial Building, Eero Saarinen, 1957. Milwaukee Art Museum, Institutional Archives.

If you’ve visited the Museum recently, you know that we take our 125th anniversary seriously. There was cake for “Barbara Brown Lee Day” on May 2, there are three celebratory exhibitions, including a glamorous salon-style rehang of Gallery 10, and an upcoming publication about the roots of the Milwaukee Art Museum in Layton’s Legacy: An Historic American Art Collection.

An anniversary is an excuse to celebrate and an opportunity to engage the community. It is also a chance for us to dig into our history and learn more about our past.

Research is never done!

For my part, when I was in New England this winter, I made a research diversion to Yale University to delve into their Eero Saarinen Archives to find information we could use about the design, inspiration, and creation of the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center.

In working with Museum Archivist/Librarian Heather Winters on the 125 Years of the Milwaukee Art Museum (Baumgartner Galleria) exhibition and online timeline, I learned that we have a wealth of documentation about the design and planning stages of the Museum’s 2001 Santiago Calatrava building. But the Museum Archives have relatively less about the equally-important Modernist Eero Saarinen War Memorial Building (1957).

Saarinen’s office, fortunately for us, kept thorough records of the project, and those materials were donated to Yale University, where they are available on site to any visiting researcher and (in part) online in Yale’s Manuscripts and Archives Digital Images Database.  In 1971, Eero Saarinen’s wife, Aline, donated personal records (letters, journals) to the Yale Archives. In 2002 Saarinen’s successor architecture firm, Roche Dinkeloo and Associates, followed suit to donate their own holdings of the architect’s project files, drawings, photographs, and scrapbooks. Eero Saarinen was a graduate of Yale in 1934 and contributed two significant structures to the University campus: Ezra Stiles and Morse residential colleges and the Ingalls Hockey Rink. Cranbrook Academy and the Smithsonian Archives of American Art also have Saarinen archives.

To share a bit of what I learned about our Milwaukee treasure while spending three glorious days in Yale’s Gothic-style reading room, reviewing box after box, here are four specific items that speak to the importance of exploring the wide variety of materials available in a rich Archive.

Author’s snapshot of Saarinen’s War Memorial model photographed and taped on a Milwaukee aerial photo. Taken in Eero Saarinen collection, Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University.

First, there was a series of black-and-white photographs of a small architectural model of Saarinen’s site plan for the lakefront War Memorial Center and performing arts center. (The physical model itself was not in the Archive.) This small wood and paper model was photographed against a yard of grass in full sun, for accurate shadows, and then the printed image was cut and pasted over an aerial view of Milwaukee.

I appreciated that this composite image, with its yellowing tape, gave me not only a sense of the soaring concrete building design and Milwaukee’s landscape in the mid-1950s, but also a sense of how an architect prepared and presented information in the pre-Photoshop era. This is very different than the tools that were available to Santiago Calatrava for rendering the Quadracci Pavilion in the 1990s.

Author’s snapshot of Saarinen’s design material samples for the Milwaukee Co. War Memorial Building. Taken in Eero Saarinen collection, Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University.

Second, my design loving heart pitter-pattered when I opened the Archival box containing Saarinen’s fabric samples for our building! Yale’s Archive included six boards pasted up with interior finishing materials for the War Memorial Center. This particular board (shown above) had fabric samples for the office furniture intended for the Art Center’s second floor.

As many Museum staff do, I keep one of the building’s original Saarinen Executive Armchairs (the version with tubular steel legs) in my office, but they have since been reupholstered with pink or orange wool fabric.

The other five boards (not pictured) showed details of the building’s vinyl floor treatment, the wood baseboard trim, the creamy linen covering the the gallery walls, and the white paint of the ceiling. This information is vital for us in Milwaukee should we ever wish to return part of Saarinen’s masterpiece building to its original appearance. We would have evidence for every little detail.

Author’s snapshot of Stephen Rosera’s 1959 sketch of Saarinen’s War Memorial Building. Taken in Eero Saarinen collection, Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University.

For the third item, I think we can credit the influence of Eero’s wife Aline Saarinen, an accomplished architecture critic who turned to children’s art education after her marriage.

Included in the Archive are letters between Aline and Mrs. Wyeth Jones, Director of Milwaukee’s CAP (Children’s Arts Program).  In 1959, Jones shared children’s drawings of the building, citing them as direct evidence of the inspiration that Saarinen’s masterpiece had on the children that regularly occupy it. I was charmed looking at these drawings, carefully preserved for decades in the office of a great architect. I imagined how magnificent Saarinen’s dramatic concrete building must have seemed to 13-year-old Stephen Rosera when he made the above drawing.

Author’s snapshot of Saarinen designs for signage, Milwaukee Co. War Memorial Building. Taken in Eero Saarinen collection, Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University.

Fourth, I was amazed to find Saarinen’s plans for the scale, location, font, and layout of all the way-finding signage in the building. This reiterated to me what a comprehensive work of art the Milwaukee County War Memorial Building was, and is. The architecture, of course, was represented in the Archive, through hundreds of plans and drawings and photographs, but here there is also evidence of Saarinen’s attention to detail, such as the font of the Men’s Restroom sign and the upholstery on the office sofas. Each one reminded me that, in this building, we have a spectacular example of work by one of the 20th-century’s greatest design minds.

With sensitivity and the reminder that this historic documentation is preserved at Yale for our use in Milwaukee, we can be prepared to stay true to Saarinen’s design vision in the future.

Mel Buchanan is the Assistant Curator of 20th-century Design. Mel’s curatorial responsibility includes interpreting, displaying, and building the Museum’s collection of craft, design, and decorative objects.

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941), Isola di San Giacomo in Palude Chandelier II, 2000. Blown glass; 183 x 86 x 96 in. Milwaukee Art Museum, Gift of Suzy B. Ettinger in memory of Sanford J. Ettinger. Photo John R. Glembin.© 2013, Dale Chihuly

One cannot walk through the doors of the Milwaukee Art Museum without taking in a colorful burst of Dale Chihuly’s glass artwork. The Museum’s Isola di San Giacomo in Palude Chandelier II (at left) is one of the most popular works in the Museum, located at the entry of the Quadracci Pavilion. Milwaukee’s Suzy B. Ettinger, who was recently featured in a great Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Style article, donated the artwork in 2001 to brighten the Museum’s new white Santiago Calatava-designed addition.

Museum visitors have been posing for photos with it ever since (it even appears snaking behind my own mother in her Facebook profile picture). Chihuly’s universal popularity encourages many museums to place his glass artwork front and center as a cheerful greeting.

In fact, in the almost 50 years since he lived and studied in Wisconsin, no other artist can claim to have brought as much popular attention to American art glass as Dale Chihuly.

This weekend, Wisconsin is celebrating Chihuly’s achievements.

Dale Chihuly and the studio glass movement have a long history in Wisconsin. The University of Wisconsin-Madison will honor this tradition in 2013 by awarding Chihuly an honorary degree. The Doctorate of Fine Arts will be bestowed on the artist at the spring commencement ceremony on May 17 at the Kohl Center, which includes the colorful “Mendota Wall” of Chihuly glass.

Dale Chihuly, Blanket Cylinder #20, 1976. Blown glass
11 1/4 x 4 3/4 in. Milwaukee Art Museum, Gift of the Sheldon M. Barnett Family. Photo credit P. Richard Eells
© 2013, Dale Chihuly.

A native of Washington state, Dale Chihuly came to the University of Wisconsin in 1965 to study in the nation’s innovative first collegiate program in glass, which had been founded in 1963 by artist Harvey Littleton.

Littleton and Dominick Labino (a glass research scientist at the Johns-Manville plant near Toledo, Ohio) are credited with founding the “American Studio Glass Movement.” The men ran two 1962 glassblowing workshops at The Toledo Museum of Art, during which they aimed to bring glass work out of large production factories to become a creative material for contemporary art. Littleton and Labino developed a small furnace, which allowed individual artists to engage with hot glass techniques, such as glass-blowing, mold-blowing, and glass sculpting. Such techniques had previously required factory facilities and teamwork, so they had been out of reach for individuals.

Taking these innovations back to Wisconsin in 1963, Littleton introduced the first university program for glass in the United States. Dale Chihuly arrived to study there in 1965.

A good way to sum up what was so different and special about this moment is that Littleton’s academic approach to glass changed artists’ focus from vessels or decoration to a primary concern with the execution of artistic ideas. Littleton’s students, who included Chihuly, Marvin Lipofsky, and Fritz Dreisbach, subverted the traditional associations between glass and functionality by creatively exploring sculptural forms. This online essay by the Corning Museum of Art explains their intentions in more depth.

Littleton’s glass program was immediately popular. Art students immediately took to the medium, and the school produced many acclaimed glass artists as a result, further spreading its influence as years went on. An astute teacher, Littleton encouraged his graduating students to find academic employment and start more glass programs.

Dale Chihuly was one of the students who took Littleton’s teachings to heart. After graduating, he pushed forward the “glass as art” idea by founding educational programs himself, and by developing a signature style so popular that his work adorns both museums and casinos. After graduating with a master of science degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he had his first public exhibition at the Madison Art Center in 1967. Then, he moved east to study at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he later established the glass program at that august arts institution.

Dale Chihuly, Lavender Pink Macchia Set with Black Lip Wraps, 1986. Blown glass; 14 x 24 x 24 in.
Milwaukee Art Museum, Gift of the Sheldon M. Barnett Family, Marilyn and Orren Bradley, Janey and Doug MacNeil, Audrey and Robert Mann, and Jill and Frank Pelisek. Photo by Dedra Wells. (c) 2013, Dale Chihuly.

In 1968, Chihuly was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to work at the Venini glass factory in Venice, Italy. There he observed the team approach to blowing glass, rather than the individual method he learned in Wisconsin with Littleton.  In 1971, Chihuly co-founded Washington’s Pilchuck Glass School, now an international glass center and leader of the avant-garde in the development of glass as a fine art.

Chihuly’s work is included in more than 200 hundred museum collections worldwide, including, of course, the Milwaukee Art Museum. Chihuly has been the recipient of many awards, including eleven honorary doctorates and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

If you’d like to learn more about the artist as his work changes and his influence grows, the Chihuly Studio keeps an active online presence through a website,  Facebook page, and Twitter account.

We in Wisconsin are proud of our state’s contribution to the international field of glass as art. As the University of Wisconsin grants Dale Chihuly an honorary degree on May 17, 2013, they honor not only one of the school’s most well-known artists, but they pay tribute to a influential art movement that had its roots in our fine academic institutions and our thriving arts community.

Mel Buchanan is the Assistant Curator of 20th-century Design. Mel’s curatorial responsibility includes interpreting, displaying, and building the Museum’s collection of craft, design, and decorative objects.