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Description: Livable Modernism: Interior Decorating and Design during the Great Depression
In 1983, the Yale University Art Gallery mounted the pioneering exhibition on 1920s American modern decorative arts, At Home in Manhattan, curated by Karen Davies, then a graduate student in the Department of the History of Art. At Home in Manhattan recovered a vibrant early world in...
PublisherYale University Art Gallery
PublisherYale University Press
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00076.002
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Director’s Foreword
In 1983, the Yale University Art Gallery mounted the pioneering exhibition on 1920s American modern decorative arts, At Home in Manhattan, curated by Karen Davies, then a graduate student in the Department of the History of Art. At Home in Manhattan recovered a vibrant early world in American modernism and marked the beginning of the Art Gallery’s commitment to collecting American decorative arts of the years between the two World Wars. After more than twenty years, the Art Gallery has returned to this rich period and now presents Livable Modernism: Interior Decorating and Design During the Great Depression. Livable Modernism provides a sequel of sorts to At Home in Manhattan, picking up the story of American modern design in the early years of the Depression. Livable Modernism also provides some insight into the history of the Yale collection of American Art. The collection of American Decorative Arts was established in the interwar years—at exactly the same time as the objects studied here were created—with gifts from Francis P. Garvan and Mabel Brady Garvan. The Garvan Collection focused on exemplary works from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, as followed the tastes of the day. As Livable Modernism explains, modernist design in the 1930s often actively engaged the public’s enthusiasm for early American decorative arts, attempting to translate the popular veneration of the past into new forms. The objects studied here thus not only represent growth in the Art Gallery’s collection, but also give us a new perspective on the existing collection: they remind us that the Garvans lived in a modern period and that their impulse to preserve objects from the American past was a modern one.
Kristina Wilson, Marcia Brady Tucker Curatorial Fellow in American Decorative Arts, began gathering ideas for this project several years ago as a graduate student in the History of Art department. When it became clear that the timing for her project would coincide with our major renovation of Louis Kahn’s landmark building—another example of Yale’s embrace of modernism—Ms. Wilson and Patricia E. Kane, Friends of American Arts Curator of American Decorative Arts, developed a proposal for a book-length study of Depression-era design. In the course of her research, Ms. Wilson has helped the Art Gallery expand our collection of twentieth-century decorative arts and has also brought new light to bear on existing works in our collection. We are grateful to the Graham Foundation for their support of the resulting publication, Livable Modernism.
We are fortunate to have the American Arts galleries open during the course of the Kahn renovations, and to have the Matrix gallery available for temporary exhibitions. The exhibition that accompanies Livable Modernism is made possible through the generosity of the Friends of American Arts at Yale and a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. I would also like to thank John C. Waddell, Yale Class of ’59, for his generous loans to the exhibition. In the acknowledgments, Ms. Wilson thanks the many members of the Yale University Art Gallery community who helped bring the exhibition and this book into being.
Finally, the Marcia Brady Tucker Fellowship in American Art was established to support the research pursuits of young scholars in the field, and is yet another example of the lasting legacy of the Garvan and Brady families. The Tucker Fellowship contributes to the educational mission of this institution by making possible such in-depth research projects as Ms. Wilson has conducted for Livable Modernism. It also allows us to reach out to the interdisciplinary arts community at Yale with a project that will stimulate conversation among architects, artists, and art historians. Livable Modernism, undertaken at a time when our facilities are under renovation wraps, is an example of the Art Gallery’s enduring commitment to innovative scholarship.
JOCK REYNOLDS
THE HENRY J. HEINZ II DIRECTOR, YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY
Director’s Foreword
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