Vienna Moderne: 1898-1914

10 January–24 February 1980

At the turn of the 20th century, several artists banded together to bring Art Nouveau to the Viennese artistic community. Led by painter Gustav Klimt and architect Otto Wagner, the Vienna Secession, transformed the fine and decorative arts. The exhibition at the Smart Museum featured works by these and other artists and their designs, including furniture, utensils, and even clothing. The special curator for the exhibition was Jan Ernst Adlmann, who assembled 300 items from public and private collections in Vienna, Paris, and the United States. The Smart Museum of Art sponsored a symposium focusing on the exhibition, which included lectures by Edward A. Maser, Smart Director; Stephen Toulmin, University of Chicago Professor in the Department of Philosophy, the Divinity School, and the Committee on Social Thought; Manfred Hoppe, Professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures; Reinhold Heller, Professor in the Department of Art; and John W. Keefe, Guest Curator and former curator of European Decorative Arts, Art Institute of Chicago.

Curator: John W. Keefe, Guest Curator and former curator of European Decorative Arts, Art Institute of Chicago

The exhibition was organized by the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, supported by the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Design in New York. The exhibition was funded by the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation and the Austrian Ministry for Science and Research. The Art Institute of Chicago and the Consul General of Austria in Chicago, Illinois were fundamental in bringing the exhibition to the Smart Museum.

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