Get our newsletters

The women who shaped Wharton Esherick’s vision featured in Michener Museum exhibition

Posted

The Michener Art Museum in Doylestown has opened a new exhibition highlighting the influences that shaped the work of sculptor and woodworker Wharton Esherick.
“Daring Design: The Impact of Three Women on Wharton Esherick’s Craft” runs through Feb. 6. The exhibition explores the significant impact of three women – industrialist Helene Fischer, artist Hanna Weil, and photographer Marjorie Content – on Esherick’s career and development at a pivotal creative moment for the artist in the 1930s.
Fischer and Content supported Esherick financially through commissions of his work, and all three women provided artistic inspiration and propelled the artist to conceive new ideas that pushed the boundaries between fine art and functional design.
Featuring innovative furniture pieces designed by Esherick for Fischer, Weil and Content, as well as artwork created by Weil and Content, Daring Design investigates the visual and material dialogue between these artists and patrons.
“The support and collaboration from Fischer, Weil and Content allowed Wharton Esherick to produce some of his most innovative work during the Great Depression, when many artists struggled financially, and yet the impact these women had on his art and career is not widely recognized,” said Kate Quinn, executive director of Michener Art Museum, and a member of the board of director of the Wharton Esherick Museum in Chester County.

Daring Design features several works on loan from the Wharton Esherick Museum, located in the artist’s former studio, as well as a special group of objects on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
“Wharton Esherick blurred the traditional separation between fine art and craft, adding personal expression to everything he created, whether furniture, sculpture, or the architecture of his own home and studio,” said Julie Siglin, executive director of the Wharton Esherick Museum.
As a sculptor, Esherick worked primarily in wood and extended his unique forms to furniture, furnishings, interiors, buildings, and more. Now recognized as a leader of the Studio Furniture Movement, Esherick saw himself as an artist and his concern was with form, not technique. His work was complemented by the paintings, prints, drawings, poetry, and sculpture he also created.
The exhibition is co-curated by Michener Art Museum’s Chief Curator Laura Turner Igoe, Ph.D., and woodworker Mark Sfirri, a leading authority on Esherick and his life.


Join our readers whose generous donations are making it possible for you to read our news coverage. Help keep local journalism alive and our community strong. Donate today.


X