Late april

‘GOING OUT OF STYLE’ SURVEYS DESIGN AT MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM JUNE 21

AVV 2-9 #687996

MILWAUKEE, WIS. —The exhibition, “Going out of Style: 400 Years of Changing Tastes in Furniture,” will be on view June 21–September 30 at The Milwaukee Art Museum.

The study of historic design has largely focused on the ideal principles of specific styles. The linear geometry of Art Deco, for example, was praised in the early Twentieth Century as the paradigmatic embodiment of the new urban lifestyle. Similarly, Eighteenth Century writers embraced asymmetrical Rococo carving as the physical complement to their new libertine freedoms.

These and other glowing endorsements of particular styles at the height of their popularity have dominated historians’ investigations into the history of design. Artists and critics often reserved their most colorful language, however, for fashions in decline. More than just old-fashioned, styles on their way out were often seen as immoral, low-class, connected to an out-of-favor political regime, or simply ugly. This exhibition will pair exemplars of specific styles with written critiques that reveal more than just the whimsy of fluctuating tastes but also important shifts in aesthetic and cultural theory over 400 years of European settlement in America.

This exhibition is curated at the Milwaukee Art Museum by Sarah Fayen, assistant curator at the Chipstone Foundation and adjunct assistant curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

The museum is at 700 North Art Museum Drive. For information, www.mam.org or 414-224-3200.