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he Metropolitan Museum's involvement with the decorative arts of this century is one of long standing. A decade of intense collecting began in 1922, when Edward C. Moore, Jr., donated a generous sum for the purchase of objects of the finest quality from America and Europe. Thanks to the discriminating eye of Joseph Breck, the Curator of Decorative Arts, the fund was used judiciously to buy examples of the now celebrated Art Deco style. Upon Breck's death in 1933, the impetus for collecting temporarily lapsed, but a succession of exhibitions already underway continued as planned. Inspired by the 1925 Paris Exposition, Richard Bach, the Museum's Director for Industrial Relations, organized a series of shows presenting innovative design. For "The Architect and the Industrial Arts," which opened in February 1929, a committee of architects headed by Eliel Saarinen created room settings with specially manufactured furnishings. The spectacularly popular exhibition drew an unprecedented attendance of 185,256, and was extended from six weeks to seven months. In 1934 architects were joined by the first generation of American industrial designers, as exhibits by Donald Deskey, Raymond Loewy, and Gilbert Rohde were featured. The program was discontinued during World War II. Interest in the field of twentiethcentury decorative arts was slow to regenerate after the war. It was not until 1966 that the Museum made another major acquisition with the purchase of an entire dining room-wood paneling, murals, and furniture-created for a Parisian townhouse between 1910 and 1914. The ensemble by the Sym- bolist painter Lucien Levy-Dhurmer evokes an exotic garden, with carved wisteria overhanging the painted murals. The detail on the opposite page illustrates the room as it stood in Paris; now dismantled and in storage, it awaits reassembly in the Southwest Wing, still to be built in the final phase of the Museum's master plan. Modern art in all its aspects was given new focus at the Metropolitan in 1967 with the establishment of the Department of Contemporary Art, soon renamed Twentieth Century Art. At the instigation of Henry Geldzahler, who was head of the department until 1978, Pen- elope Hunter-Stiebel, Assistant Curator and author of this publication, brought out of storage Breck's outstanding purchases of the 1920s and began again the systematic building of the collection, extending from Art Nouveau to contemporary Studio Craft. The best of modern decorative arts is today sought by collectors and museums the world over. The support of the Friends of Twentieth-Century Decorative Arts, whose contributions have created the first purchase fund since the 1922 Moore gift, promises new vitality to the Metropolitan in the now highly competitive field it pioneered half a century ago. PHILIPPE De MONTEBELLO Director The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin Winter 1979/1980 Volume XXXVII, Number 3 (ISSN 0026-1521) Published quarterly. Copyright 1979 by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, New York, N.Y. 10028. Second-class postage paid at New York, N.Y. and Additional Mailing Offices. Subscriptions $1 1 .50 a year. Single copies $2.95. Sent free to Museum members. Four weeks' notice required for change of address. Back issues available on microfilm, from University Microfilms, 313 N. First Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Volumes I-XXVIII (1905-1942) available as a clothbound reprint set or as individual yearly volumes from Arno Press, 3 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016, or from the Museum, Box 255, Gracie Station, New York, N.Y. 10028. Photography in this issue by Sheldan Collins, Metropolitan Museum Photograph Studio. General Manager of Publications: John P. O'Neill. Editor in Chief of the Bulletin: Joan Holt. Associate Editor: Joanna Ekman. Design: Alvin Grossman On the cover: Detail of the mural from the Grand Salon of the liner Normandie (see pages 32-35). Frontispiece: Detail of the Wisteria Dining Room by Lucien Levy-Dhurmer (1865-1953). 1910-14. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 66.244.1-26 1 The Metropolitan Museum of Art is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin ® www.jstor.org
Page 1: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bull
Page 5 and 6: he decorative arts of the twentieth
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--, N o movement has had more than
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Ascientist. Dominick Labino (b. 191
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