Symposium: Vally Wieselthier, The Wiener Werkstätte, and Transatlantic Design
Image: FIT Special Collections and College Archives | Gladys Marcus Library | Fashion Institute of Technology, New York
FEBRUARY 10 | 9 AM – 5 PM | CUNY Graduate Center
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE
We are pleased to co-present the one-day symposium Transatlantic Modernism, 1900–1945: Vally Wieselthier, the Wiener Werkstätte, and Design, organized in collaboration with the Jewish Museum and the CUNY Graduate Center. Bringing together international scholars, the program examines transatlantic exchanges between Vienna and the United States through the lens of modern design in the first half of the twentieth century.
About the Symposium
Taking the pioneering ceramic artist Vally Wieselthier (1895–1945) and the Wiener Werkstätte as points of departure, the symposium explores key contributions to modern art and design between 1900 and 1945. Particular attention is given to Jewish women artists, designers, and patrons whose work played a formative role in shaping new modernisms in interwar Vienna and beyond. The program is organized on the occasion of two exhibitions: Vally Wieselthier: Sculpting Modernism, recently on view at the Forum, and the forthcoming exhibition on the women of the Wiener Werkstätte at the Jewish Museum, opening in July 2026. Together, these projects illuminate the progressive cultural and social conditions that enabled women to flourish as agents of artistic and social reform at the beginning of the twentieth century. Through a series of scholarly papers and discussions, participants will offer new perspectives on Wieselthier’s life and work as the most successful member of the Wiener Werkstätte to establish a career in the United States. Topics include transatlantic dialogues in modernism, feminist readings of Wieselthier and her contemporaries, the image of the “new woman,” and the distinctive Viennese context that fostered women’s innovative roles in art and design.
This program takes place in the Segal Theater, First Floor, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York.