Conversation moderated by Brooke Hodge
Thursday, May 19, 2011, 6:00pm-9:00pm
at the Bard Graduate Center
38 W 86th Street, NY, NY
About Knoll Textiles, 1945-2010
From May 18 to July 31, 2011, the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture (BGC) presents Knoll Textiles, 1945–2010, the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to a leading producer of modern textile design. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue consider the individuals and ideas that helped shape Knoll Textiles from its founding to 2010, with the goal of bringing the sartorial dimension of the Knoll brand and the under-recognized role of textiles in the history of modern interiors and design to the forefront of public attention. The lack of recognition of modern textiles is perhaps best exemplified by the iconic “Womb” chair by Eero Saarinen. While it is featured in most twentieth-century design collections, its fabric, usually a Knoll textile and a dominant design element of the chair, is rarely if ever identified.
The curators of the exhibition are Earl Martin, associate curator at the BGC; Paul Makovsky, editorial director, Metropolis magazine; Angela Völker, Curator Emeritus of Textiles at the Museum für Angewandte Kunst (MAK), Vienna; and Susan Ward, an independent textile historian. The exhibition comprises approximately 175 examples of textiles, furniture, photographs, and ephemera on loan from public, private, and corporate collections, including the Museum of Modern Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Smithsonian Institution, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum; Yale University Art Gallery; the Brooklyn Museum; the Knoll Museum; and the KnollTextiles Archive.
Interestingly, the lack of museological and historical interest in modern textiles became apparent as the various loans for this exhibition were secured. For example, key works from Knoll’s innovative handwoven collection of the 1950s were found in boxes of scraps preserved for more than fifty years in the attic of a former Knoll employee and large samples dating to 1948, the second year of production for Knoll Textiles, languished in storage for decades at one of America’s leading design collections without formally entering the collection until they were recognized by Bard’s curatorial team.
Another major contribution of this exhibition has been the discovery in private collections of furniture with its original upholstery. Not only were these rare examples of early upholstery on Knoll furniture brought to light, but a major conservation project was subsequently undertaken that revealed the challenges of properly conserving twentieth-century furniture—of preserving not simply the furniture form but also the textile covering it.
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