Current Exhibition

Related Programming
Sunday, March 22, 2 p.m.
The Amazing Evolution of Ohio Furniture from the Victorian Era to the Modern Age
by exhibition curator Andrew Richmond

Sunday, April 19, 2 p.m. 
From Punch Bowls to Jazz Bowls: The Glory Days of Ohio Pottery and Glass
by exhibition curator Andrew Richmond

Sunday, May 3, 2 p.m.
Traditions of Progress: Ohio Painters from Lily Martin Spencer to Charles Burchfield
by Susan Talbot-Stanaway
A Tradition of Progress: Ohio Decorative Arts 1860-1945 tells the story of Ohio through decorative arts objects, starting with the Civil War era and concluding with the event that marked the true beginning of the modern era—World War II.   This time period was perhaps the most transformative in American history.  Ohio artists, artisans, designers, and manufacturers played a very important role in this transformation.  The exhibition will include more than 150 splendid pieces of furniture, glass, ceramics, metalwork, and textiles. 

The story of A Tradition of Progress: Ohio Decorative Arts will be told in blocks of time, beginning in the 1860s with furnishings made in isolated communities such as Zoar, where craftsmen held on to traditional methods to the end of the nineteenth century. Two decades after the conclusion of the Civil War, America’s increasing wealth, industrialized manufacturing, roads, and railroads led to the “Gilded Age” of luxury.  The third segment summarizes the revival of handicraft through the Arts and Crafts, Art Carved, and Art Pottery movements.  The birth and success of Modernism is the final segment; from the mid-1920s -1940s, high-style design permeated all levels of decorative arts production in Ohio.

A Tradition of Progress features fine objects on loan from private collectors, museums, and historical centers, including the Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cincinnati Museum Center, Cleveland Museum of Art, The Henry Ford, Ohio History Connection, Toledo Museum of Art, and Western Reserve Historical Society. 

The presentation of A Tradition of Progress: Ohio Decorative Arts 1860-1945 is supported by the Johns Family, Fairfield County Foundation, Garth’s Auctions, Delaware, OH, and the Ohio Historical Decorative Arts Association, with additional assistance from Deward Watts, Bodenheimer-Mayer House 

The exhibition’s curator, Andrew Richmond, a vice president at Garth’s Auctions, also served as the curator of Equal in Goodness: Ohio Decorative Arts 1788-1860 at the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio in 2011.  Mr. Richmond is an Ohio native and received his M.A. in Early American Culture from the Winterthur Museum.  He has lectured and published widely on Ohio decorative arts.  A Tradition of Progress: Ohio Decorative Arts 1860-1945 opens February 7, 2015, and runs through May 17.

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