Middle of Everything
The Crafted World of Wharton Esherick
Taft Museum of Art
316 Pike St.
June 7–Sept. 7
General admission is free for Taft members, military, and youth (17 and under); $15 for adults; and $12 for seniors. Admission is free on Sundays and Mondays.
For tickets and information visit taftmuseum.org/CraftedWorld.
If your idea furniture leans more toward IKEA practicality or Wayfair bargains, treat yourself to the Mid-century modern masterpieces in The Crafted World of Wharton Esherick, opening June 7 at the Taft Museum of Art.
The exhibition presents the innovative work of Wharton Esherick (1887–1970), the famed American artist best known as the father of the studio furniture movement. Co-organized by the Brandywine Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and the Wharton Esherick Museum in Malvern, Pennsylvania, the stop at the Taft wraps up the exhibition nationwide tour.
Between 1926 and 1966, Esherick built his hillside home and studio in southeastern Pennsylvania. Now the Wharton Esherick Museum (WEM), it houses a treasury of work from seven decades of artistic practice. To share Esherick’s creative vision with contemporary audiences, The Crafted World draws on WEM’s rich and seldomly loaned collection of over 3,000 works of art, detailing the artist’s career from his early woodcut illustrations to his revolutionary reimagining of furniture forms as organic sculpture.
“This exhibition, in the unique setting of the Taft Museum of Art (also once a residence), brings a fresh perspective to Wharton Esherick’s distinct aesthetic vision and imaginative spirit as well as the important legacy he left in crafting the meaning of ‘home’ for future generations. Programming will engage contemporary audiences with tours by working artists, workshops with woodcarvers and printmakers, and more,” says Taft Museum of Art Associate Curator, Ann Glasscock, who is curating the museum's presentation of the exhibition.
Esherick’s hillside retreat was the locus, and often the subject, of his creativity throughout his career. Visitors—high-end clients, avant-garde artists, skilled tradespeople, and ordinary individuals interested in living with Esherick’s work—entered a world crafted by the artist’s hands. Esherick found acclaim through private commissions, such as a suite of interiors (1935–38) for Justice Curtis Bok, including a fireplace now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and public exhibitions, for example the “America at Home” display at the New York World’s Fair (1939–40). Today, Esherick is considered a foundational figure for the American studio craft movement.