About the Exhibition

Highlights:
Celestial Centerpiece, 1964
Robert J. King, American, born 1917
Cubic coffee service and tray, 1927
Erik Magnussen, Danish, 1884–1961
Diament dinette set, 1928
Jean G. Theobald, American, active 1920s–1930s
Double vegetable dish, 1938 (introduced 1936)
Belle Kogan, American (born Russia), 1902–2000
Tureen with platter, 1986
Elsa Peretti, American, born 1940
Water pitcher and tumbler, 1939 (designed c. 1938)
Attributed to Arthur Leroy Barney, American, 1884–1955

Modernism in American Silver: 20th-Century Design, a groundbreaking exhibition exploring the aesthetic richness and cultural significance of modern silver design in America between 1925 and 2000, has been heralded as a major contribution to decorative arts scholarship and as a touchstone for future projects in the field.

The exhibition, organized by the Dallas Museum of Art, features more than 200 magnificent works mostly from the Jewel Stern American Silver Collection, which is part of the Museum’s permanent collection and the world’s most significant collection of modern silver. The works explore the creative development of the American silver industry’s creative forays into modernist design. Kevin W. Tucker, The Margot B. Perot Curator of Decorative Arts and Design of the Dallas Museum of Art, is the project director and co-curator. Jewel Stern, an independent scholar, and Charles Venable, Deputy Director for Collections and Programs at Cleveland Museum of Art, are co-curators.

The primary goal of Modernism in American Silver is to chart the stylistic design history of modern American production silver. The exhibition will also explore economic and cultural factors that influenced silver design, manufacture, and marketing across more than seven decades and six major thematic areas:

The Modernist Impulse: Art Moderne and the Avant-Garde
Skyscrapers to Streamlined: The Machine Age
Modern Classicism
The New Look: Free Form and the 1950s
Future Dreams: The Space Age
The Boutique: Architects and Fashion Designers

The exhibition includes the works of widely recognized designers such as Eliel Saarinen, Robert Venturi, Michael Graves, Elsa Peretti, and Richard Meier, and also will offer important revelations concerning the role of designers such as John Prip, Robert King, John Van Koert, Donald Colflesh and Tommi Parzinger, and a host of individuals who were seldom recognized by the general public. Many of the works featured in the exhibition are from the Dallas Museum of Art’s Jewel Stern American Silver Collection, the world’s most significant collection of modern American silver.

In addition to the exhibition, a book of the same title, authored by Jewel Stern and edited by Tucker and Venable, thoroughly catalogues the works and serves as an immensely important resource on American silver—more extensive than any other of its kind currently available. Beginning in the 1920s with the growing fascination in progressive European works, the catalogue Modernism in American Silver: 20th-Century Design will detail all aspects of the American silver industry’s efforts to capture the market for modern design, resulting in a richer understanding of the transformation of the American silver industry and its explorations of various movements and styles. Modernism in American Silver: 20th-Century Design, published by Yale University Press, is 392 pages and contains more than 300 color photographs.

Silver at the Dallas Museum of Art
The Dallas Museum of Art seriously began collecting silver in 1987 with the gift of the Hoblitzelle Collection of English silver. This collection joined the Museum’s holdings of Victorian-era silver including ornate serving pieces by Tiffany, Gorham, and Whiting. In 1989, the Museum purchased several pieces from the sale of the Sam Wagstaff Collection including Gorham’s iconic iceberg bowl and a Tiffany Chrysanthemum pitcher.

By the late 1990s the Museum acquired the Belmont-Rothschild humidor by Tiffany and the dressing table and stool Gorham made for the 1900 Paris Exposition and other important pieces that began to shape the Museum’s collection.

In the summer of 2002, the Dallas Museum of Art acquired the most important private collection of 20th-century American silver in existence: The Jewel Stern American Silver Collection. Assembled over two decades by scholar Jewel Stern, the collection consists of more than 400 pieces of industrially produced American silver. The addition of this magnificent collection gives the Dallas Museum of Art one of the most significant holdings of late 19th- and 20th-century American silver in the world and solidifies the Museum’s position as a leading center for collecting and scholarship in this field.

Image: Cocktail shaker, 1928, Charter Company, Wallingford, Connecticut, a division of International Silver Company, enameled silver, wood, Dallas Museum of Art, The Jewel Stern American Silver Collection, acquired through the Patsy Lacy Griffith Collection, gift of Patsy Lacy Griffith by exchange, 2002.29.2.a–c