Symposium: Vally Wieselthier, The Wiener Werkstätte, and Transatlantic Design

Presented in collaboration with the Austrian Cultural Forum New York and the CUNY Graduate Center, Transatlantic Modernism, 1900–1945: Vally Wieselthier, the Wiener Werkstätte, and Design takes these topics as points of departure to explore transatlantic exchanges between Vienna and the United States. In centering the Austrian-American ceramic sculptor Vally (Valerie) Wieselthier (1895–1945), the symposium brings together an international cohort of experts to examine pivotal contributions to modern art and design in the early twentieth century—many of them made by Jewish women affiliated with the Wiener Werkstätte (1903–1932)—and the dialogues in transatlantic modernism that expanded these discourses into an American context.

Organized on the occasion of two exhibitions, the recent Vally Wieselthier: Sculpting Modernism at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York and the forthcoming exhibition on the women of the Wiener Werkstätte opening at the Jewish Museum this summer, speakers will illuminate the unique, reform-oriented, context in which these artists operated.

International scholars will provide fresh perspectives on Wieselthier’s life and work as the most successful member of the Wiener Werkstätte to establish a career in the United States. Participants will investigate the image of the “New Woman” in the work of both Wieselthier and her contemporaries, and offer feminist readings on this symbolic, emancipatory, figure. Further presentations will also explore the distinctive circumstances and conditions in Vienna at the start of the 20th century which saw women in particular flourish as agents of reform, as well as the later reverberations of this milieu translated to New York. Special attention will be given to Jewish women whose work as artists, designers, and patrons were instrumental to the construction of new modernisms in this period.

This program takes place in the Segal Theater, First Floor, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York.