Highlights Archives
Milwaukee Art Museum Exhibits Society Items
A rocking chair from Pendarvis and a table from Villa Louis are among the items now on display at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The Finest in the Western Country: Wisconsin Decorative Arts 1820-1900 showcases the diverse array of furniture, ceramics, textiles and metalwork created by Wisconsin craftspeople in the 19th century. The items selected from the Society's collections demonstrate that while Wisconsin may have been viewed as being far out in the "Western Country" by the more established East, the state's furniture makers and consumers were well aware of national markets and popular trends.
 A hand-painted ewer from the Wisconsin Historical Museum's collections Three examples of furniture reflect the fashionable tastes of early Wisconsin residents — a Milwaukee-made center table original to the Villa Louis in Prairie du Chien, a painted rocking chair made in Mineral Point and now in the collections of Pendarvis in Mineral Point, and a table carved by German immigrant Levi Havemann in the collection of the Wisconsin Historical Museum. Other objects featured from the museum's collections include several beaded bandolier bags and finger-twined yarn bags made by Native American women and two hand-painted ceramic ewers like the one pictured here from Pauline Pottery of Edgerton. These pieces tell a story of cultural complexity and rapid change, encompassing traditions brought by settlers arriving from Britain, Europe and New England; native customs of the Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Ojibwe and Potawatomi; and expanding systems of industrial manufacture and mass distribution.
The exhibition is organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Chipstone Foundation, and is guest curated by Emily Pfotenhauer, project coordinator for the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database. The database is an ongoing project to create a publicly accessible online archive of early Wisconsin decorative arts.
The Finest in the Western Country runs through January 4, 2009.
:: Posted October 9, 2008
|
