Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry

May 5 - September 24, 2017

Through over 50 paintings and drawings, this exhibition offers an important survey of the work of the modernist painter, designer, and poet Florine Stettheimer.

Florine Stettheimer, photograph by Peter A. Juley & Son, c. 1917-20. Image provided by Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Photograph Archives, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

The artist Florine Stettheimer (1871–1944) is an icon of Jazz Age New York. Born to a wealthy Jewish family in Rochester, she studied at the Art Students League in New York City and then in Europe, where she encountered two profound influences: the Symbolist painters and poets and, on the eve of the Great War, the Ballets Russes. Returning to Manhattan, she hosted an elite salon together with her sisters Carrie and Ettie and their mother, Rosetta, attracting many of the leading lights of the artistic vanguard. Her circle included Alfred Stieglitz, Carl Van Vechten, Georgia O’Keeffe, Elie Nadelman, Gaston Lachaise, and many others. Among her intimate friends was Marcel Duchamp.

Through over 50 paintings and drawings, a selection of costume and theater designs, photographs and ephemera, as well as critically acclaimed poems, the Jewish Museum will offer a timely reconsideration of this important American artist, revealing Stettheimer's singular and often satiric vision and significant role in American modern art. The exhibition highlights the artist's distinctly personal style of painting, Stettheimer's position amidst New York's artistic elite and avant-gardes, and her continued influence on artistic practice today.


      NEW YORK

At last grown young
with noise
and color
and light
and jazz
dance marathons and poultry shows
soulsavings and rodeos
gabfeasts and beauty contests
sky towers and bridal bowers
speakeasy bars and motor cars
columnists and movie stars

—Florine Stettheimer


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Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry is organized by the Jewish Museum, New York and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and curated by Stephen Brown, Neubauer Family Foundation Associate Curator, the Jewish Museum, and Georgiana Uhlyarik, Associate Curator, Canadian Art, the Art Gallery of Ontario. The exhibition was designed by Galia Solomonoff and Alejandro Stein of SAS/Solomonoff Architecture Studio.

Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry is made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Weissman Family, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Estate of Stella Gordon Meierfeld.

Additional support is provided by The Skirball Fund for American Jewish Life Exhibitions, the Neubauer Family Foundation, the Joan Rosenbaum Exhibition Fund, and Ealan and Melinda Wingate.

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Stettheimer Summer on 5th Ave

All summer, Jewish Museum Members receive complimentary admission to:

 

The Museum of the City of New York (5th Ave at 103rd St)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (5th Ave at 91st St)

Visitors receive complimentary admission to the Museum of the City of New York.

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