Acknowledgments

Wilson, Kristina

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Acknowledgments

Kristina Wilson

Livable Modernism: Interior Decorating and Design during the Great Depression

Acknowledgments

Author

Kristina Wilson

PublisherYale University Art Gallery

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00076.003

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15292

Acknowledgments

I have incurred debts to a great many colleagues and friends in researching and writing Livable Modernism. Foremost, I would like to thank Patricia E. Kane for her continual support and enthusiasm for this project. Pat and I first began to discuss a potential project on 1930s modernist design early in my graduate work at Yale, and her commitment to the realization of this book has been unstinting. Throughout the course of my two years as a Marcia Brady Tucker Curatorial Fellow, I have benefited from her advice, her wise comments on early drafts of the manuscript, and her insights on the state of the field of decorative arts history and its future.

I also want to thank Jock Reynolds, the Henry J. Heinz II Director of the Yale University Art Gallery, for his support of this project. Jock’s zeal for twentieth-century art in all of its manifestations is infectious, and in conversations with him over the past two years I have continually been inspired to think both more critically and more broadly about American modernism. His commitment to the scholarly life of the Art Gallery community has made this a very congenial place to pursue my project.

I am grateful to several people for their close readings of earlier versions of the manuscript, in particular Karen Lucic, Sandy Isenstadt, Pat Kirkham, David Barquist, and Ned Cooke. Ned’s interest in this project has been a continual source of support, for which I thank him. I have also benefited from conversations with several scholars in the field, who have generously shared their thoughts and time with me. I would especially like to thank Phyllis Ross, whose expertise on Gilbert Rohde’s work is unrivaled; James Beebe, who has done extensive work on the Lloyd Manufacturing Company and patiently answered my questions about tubular steel manufacturing; and Donald Albrecht, who discussed with me his thoughts on Russel Wright and on larger questions of advice manuals in twentieth-century American culture.

This project would not have been possible without the help of several collectors who have graciously let me into their homes and shared their collections and their wisdom with me: John C. Waddell, Dick and Jody Goisman, Robert Schonfeld, and Dennis Mykytyn. I have benefited enormously from their insights, developed over years of close looking at objects from this period. I would also like to thank Richard Goodbody, Tom Cogill, and Jim Wildeman, whose elegant photographs appear throughout the book. Finally, my thanks to Bill Straus and Nick Brown for sharing their knowledge about the careers and designs of Wright and Warren McArthur.

I spent the early part of this project immersed in several archival collections, and I would like to thank those institutions for making their papers available to me. Linda Baron and the late Bob Viol welcomed me at the Herman Miller Archives and made their extensive collections available to me. The staff at the Special Collections division of the Syracuse University Library helped me to navigate their massive industrial design collections. At the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Library, I appreciated the help of Stephen Van Dyk and Elizabeth Broman. Helen Adair at the Henry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, guided me through the Norman Bel Geddes Collection. Raechel Guest at the Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Conn., made the archives of the Chase Brass and Copper Company available to me. My thanks to Aimee Marshall at the Chicago Historical Society; Pat Bakunas at the Special Collections department of the Robert J. Daly Library, University of Illinois, Chicago; and Anthony Jahn, archivist at Marshall Field’s, for their help sorting through extensive archives related to the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933–34, A Century of Progress International Exposition.

This project could not have been accomplished without the help of everyone in the American Arts department at the Art Gallery. I am especially grateful to Nancy Yates, who approached the large task of acquiring illustrations for the book with amazing organization, tenacity, and humor. David Barquist and Robin Jaffee Frank shared their wisdom about transforming my rambling ideas into a project with a concrete narrative; Caroline Hannah and Katherine Chabla provided research assistance. Amy Kurtz Lansing and Dennis Carr offered friendship and support, as well as many opportunities to laugh at the folly of art history, throughout my time living among the carrels in the American Arts office.

At Yale University Press, I would like to thank Patricia Fidler, Michelle Komie, Mary Mayer, and John Long for their enthusiasm and professionalism. Lesley Baier gracefully fine-tuned the manuscript. I am especially grateful to Henk van Assen, who has created a book design that beautifully complements the dynamic world of 1930s modernism discussed here.

This book, and the exhibition that accompanies it, could not have been realized without the help of many colleagues at the Art Gallery. I would like to thank Anna Hammond, Liz Harnett, Lesley Tucker, Amy Porter, and Pam Franks for their creative approach to the public outreach for Livable Modernism; Marie Weltzien for her superlative skills as a publicist; and L. Lynne Addison, Associate Registrar, for coordinating loans. Burrus Harlow, Clarkson Crolius, and their excellent installation team have collaborated to create a compelling, dynamic exhibition design. Kathleen Derringer’s fundraising helped to organize this project. Louisa Cunningham, Charlene Senical, and the staff in the Business Office have fastidiously attended to the budgetary details. John ffrench, Janet Zullo, and Alex Contreras provided handsome photographs of the Art Gallery’s own objects. Finally, Susan Matheson, as Chief Curator, offered her advice and support in the earliest stages of this project.

A few important friends and colleagues who don’t easily fall into the above categories must also be thanked. Nonie Gadsden at the Milwaukee Art Museum and Glenn Adamson of the Chipstone Foundation introduced me to the Goismans. Glenn also read part of the manuscript at a crucial point in its development and was always ready for wide-ranging conversations on twentieth-century design; he and Alicia Volk make Milwaukee a fun place to visit. Thomas Denenberg of the Wadsworth Atheneum shared his wisdom about the Colonial Revival. I have learned a lot from Susan Greenberg, in the Modern and Contemporary Art Department at the Art Gallery, whose ideas about design and how we live with it are always refreshing. This project necessitated many trips to New York City, and I am grateful to Melissa Jampol and Seth Moskowitz for their always generous hospitality and friendship.

My parents, Richard and Ellie Wilson, whose own parents’ homes open this book, not only provided an interesting house for me to grow up in, but also love and support as I have worked on this project. Liz Geist, Mark and Daniel Geist, and Dick, Susan, and Sarah Geist have given me new homes to be a part of. Abigail Wilson always has a dose of humor on hand, as well as compelling insight on the furniture we lived with as children. David Geist is not only willing to outfit our own home in modern furniture, but has impressive reserves of patience and love, and for that, this book is dedicated to him.

KRISTINA WILSON

MARCIA BRADY TUCKER CURATORIAL FELLOW

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