Designing Modernity

Wolfsonian collection illuminates art and design objects from 1885 to 1945

By Gwen Williams

Designed by Wells Coates, the Ecko Wireless radio, 1934, combined a unique circular design with use of a new material, bakelite.

One of the largest collections of modern material culture, the Wolfsonian, founded in 1986, exhibits documents and preserves the Mitchell Wolfson Jr. Collection, an assemblage of more than 100,000 objects originating from Europe and the United States.

For more than 30 years, Mitchell Wolfson Jr. traveled the globe, amassing a diverse collection of furniture and other decorative arts, posters, everyday consumer products, paintings, rare books, prints and ephemera.

The museum took residence in a 1927 Mediterranean Revival building in Miami Beach’s Art Deco District. Formerly a storage warehouse, the building was expanded in 1992 into a seven-story, 56,000-square-foot facility. The renovation added two floors of gallery space and remodeled the building’s lower floors into curatorial, archival and library facilities.

Aspects of the collection were first exhibited at the downtown Miami campus of Miami Dade College, beginning in 1986. Through 1993, staff members were committed to unpacking, registering, cataloging, conserving and researching the collection.

The Wolfsonian’s full-scale public dimension was officially inaugurated on Nov. 11, 1995, with the opening of the major touring exhibition The Arts of Reform and Persuasion, 1885-1945.

Under the creative guidance of museum Director Cathy Leff, who came on board in 1996, the museum has flourished. “We have been able to make the collection available to the public through exhibitions, publications, scholarly research and school curricula,” Leff said. “Because of this variety of access, we are better able to understand the significance of the unparalleled collection originally assembled by Mitchell Wolfson Jr.”

In 1997, the Wolfsonian became a department of Florida International University, following Wolfson’s landmark donation of his collection to the state of Florida. Since its inception, the Wolfsonian-FIU set its sights on becoming a premier cultural, educational and research center.

“Mitchell Wolfson Jr. raised the bar for personal philanthropy when he donated almost his entire collection, as well as our remarkable home in Miami Beach, to the state of Florida,” Leff explained. “The partnership with FIU has opened the collection to students and faculty, as well as international visitors who are drawn by the spectacular range of the holdings.”

Scholarship has led to the development of important exhibitions. From presentations of European avant-garde works to wartime propaganda exhibits, Wolfsonian curators continually research and review the collection and its many themes.

“The mission of the Wolfsonian is to use objects to explore how design shapes and reflects human experiences,” said Marianne Lamonaca, associate director for curatorial affairs and education. “Since our collection focuses on objects from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, we also encourage viewers to learn from the past in order to shape the present and influence the future.”

The Wolfsonian contributes to scholarship through its award-winning Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, which is dedicated to fostering new understanding of the 1875 to 1945 period, and parallels themes in the Wolfsonian collection. Through its research programs, the museum also supports seminars, collaborative curricula and fellowships.

With such items on display as exquisite handcrafted and innovative mass-produced furniture, paintings, sculpture, ceramics, household appliances and graphic images, the collection emphasizes the power of design in the modern age.

“Design is action,” Lamonaca explained. “Through design, people turn intentions and ideas into objects, images, buildings and environments. Because design forms the structures in which people live and work, the objects that they use and the images that they view, it has shaped human perceptions and behavior.”

While the collection includes sculpture and fine arts, the majority of it is design-related decorative, graphic, architectural and industrial arts. It includes objects relating to travel and transportation, materials produced for world’s fairs and expositions, political propaganda objects and New Deal designs produced by the WPA and the Federal Art Project.

Progressive and avant-garde design movements are well-represented in the areas of British Arts and Crafts, Dutch and Italian Art Nouveau, German Design Reform and American Industrial Design.

There is a synergy between the museum’s permanent collection and its location. “Present-day South Florida was developed during the period of our collection, so there are many connections to be made regarding the social, political, technological and even economic stories that shaped our community in the past and that continue to exert influence today,” Lamonaca said.

Permanent galleries provide insight into and commentary on the collection’s overall theme, “Art and Design in the Modern Age,” interpreting the persistence of tradition as well as the introduction of modernity.

“Because design occurs in specific historical contexts, each of the objects on display is able to express aspects of the modern experience, whether embracing the new machine age of the industrial revolution or rejecting it and reverting to time-honored traditions,” Lamonaca explained.

While exhibitions focus on the time frame of the collection, the museum’s educators draw connections to the present through school programs, films, symposia and lectures. Said Lamonaca, “We try to give the visitor to the Wolfsonian many lenses to look at design from ‘the spoon to the city,’ as Italian architect Ernesto Rodgers famously said.”

The Wolfsonian-FIU’s permanent collection will be augmented with the temporary exhibition Fashioning the Modern French Interior: Pochoir Portfolios in the 1920s through May 11. The Wolfsonian-FIU is located at 1001 Washington Ave., Miami Beach; 305-531-1001; www.wolfsonian.org.