Art Deco & The Jazz Age: Now Being Celebrated at Cooper-Hewitt
The worldwide community of museums will celebrate International Museum Day on and around 18 May 2017. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) established International Museum Day in 1977 to increase public awareness of the role of museums in the development of society, and it has been steadily gaining momentum ever since. In 2016, International Museum Day garnered record-breaking participation with more than 35,000 museums hosting events in some 145 countries.
The theme of International Museum Day 2017 is Museums and contested histories: Saying the unspeakable in museums.
This theme focuses on the role of museums as hubs for promoting peaceful relationships between people. It also highlights how the acceptance of a contested history is the first step in envisioning a shared future.
New York City is home to top-notch museums in art, architecture, photography, natural history, television, radio and technology – NY.com says there are 83 museums in total among the 5 boroughs! You can find a listing and links HERE.
Just last week, we were looking at Art Deco jewelry. During the Art Deco period (1910 – 1939) influences that fueled design burst of innovation, exoticism, and modernity flowed back and forth across the Atlantic. Jazz music, a uniquely American art form, also found a ready audience in Europe. An apt metaphor for the decade’s embrace of urbanity and experimentation, jazz captured the pulse and rich mixture of cultures and rhythms that brought a new beat to contemporary life.
This era is currently being celebrated in The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920’s, the first major museum exhibition to focus on American taste during the creative explosion of the 1920’s. The Jazz Age is a multi-media experience of more than 400 examples of interior design, industrial design, decorative art, jewelry, fashion, and architecture, as well as related music and film at The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
Located at 2 East 91st Street between 5th and Madison Avenues, Cooper Hewitt is housed in the former residence of Andrew Carnegie, a New York City and national historic landmark. The Jazz Age will be on display at Cooper Hewitt now through Sunday, August 20 2017.
Also on display at Cooper Hewitt is Jeweled Splendors of the Art Deco Era: The Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan Collection. The display features jeweled objects that highlight the creative and spirited era broadly examined in The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s and showcase the collecting skills of Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan. The Prince and Princess valued intricately detailed pieces – Persian miniatures, early books and manuscripts – and their eye for complex creations is manifest in the pieces on display.
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