A(R)Talk 05: VISIONARY WOMEN OF MODERNIST DESIGN
Images: left: A dining room designed by Ilonka Karasz for the American Designers Gallery exhibition in March, 1929.; right: Design for a garden room: Friedl Dicker, 1927, Archive: Georg Schrom, Vienna.
APRIL 4 | 6.30 PM
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The Austrian Cultural Forum New York is pleased to host a panel discussion featuring the esteemed New York-based design historian Marilyn F. Friedman, author of “Making America Modern: Interior Design in the 1930s” (Bauer and Dean Publishers, 2018) and the acclaimed Vienna-based historian Dr. Caroline Wohlgemuth, whose research has focused on the history of Viennese furniture design and the exile of Jewish architects and furniture designers from Vienna in 1938. Her book “Mid-Century Modern; Visionary Furniture Design from Vienna“ was published by Birkhäuser in 2022.
Focused on six Austrian and American pioneering designers of the mid-century, the A(R)Talk 05 is part of ACFNY’s continuous effort to highlight overlooked female creators in the fields of art, architecture, and design. While Friedman will present recent research on the American designers Ilonka Karasz (1896-1981), a Hungarian émigré and Eleanor Le Maire (1897-1970), Dr. Wohlgemuth will speak about the Austrian designers Ella Briggs (1880-1977), Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1898-1944), Felice Rix-Ueno (1893-1967), and Liane Zimbler (1892-1987). A conversation, moderated by Dr. Stephanie Buhmann, Head of Visual Arts, Art, and Architecture at the ACFNY, will follow the illustrated presentations, preceding a Q&A session with the audience.
Artists in Focus
About the Speakers:
Marilyn F. Friedman is a design historian whose work focuses on the development and popularization of modern design across America during the 1920s and 30s. Friedman studied design history at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, earning a Master of Arts degree, which led to her first publication Selling Good Design: Promoting the Early Modern Interior (Rizzoli, 2003) about a series of department store exhibitions that took place in the late 1920s. Her second book, Making American Modern, Interior Design in the 1930s, was published in 2018. She has contributed articles to design journals and museum publications, and has lectured throughout the United States, and in England and Canada. Image Credits: Courtesy of M.F
Dr. Caroline Wohlgemuth studied law and arts management in Vienna and London. In the course of her studies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, she conducted scholarly research into the history of Viennese furniture design and the exile of countless Jewish architects and furniture designers from Vienna in 1938. In her publications, she explores the life histories of forgotten artists and designers, particularly women, as well as flight, expulsion, and exile in art and design. Image Credits: Ela Angerer
Dr. Stephanie Buhmann (Moderator): Head of Visual Art, Architecture & Design at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York is a historian of art, architecture and design. She has written extensively on visual art and her essays have appeared in a variety of books, international art magazines, and newspapers. Besides curating dozens of exhibitions, she has conducted over ninety published interviews with contemporary artists. In 2013 she conceived of an ongoing Studio Conversations series, focused on women of different generations working in diverse media. Her latest monograph Frederick Kiesler: Galaxies was published in 2023 (The Green Box, Berlin). She was a contributing author and co-editor of Roma Artist Ceija Stojka: What Should I Be Afraid of?, a publication released by Hirmer Publishers and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York in January 2024. Image Credits: Marcin Muchalski & Sabrina Vertzman, New York