Feature Articles


September Issue 1999

Renowned Collection of Modern Furniture From the Vitra Design Museum in Germany Arrives at the Columbia Museum of Art

100 Masterpieces form the Vitra Design Museum will be on view at the Columbia Museum of Art, in Columbia, SC, from Sept. 18 to Dec. 12. This exhibition of chairs, case furniture, lounges, stools and drawings is drawn entirely from the collection of the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany and is one of the most extensive and renowned collections of modern furniture from the late 19th and 20th centuries. Every important epoch and style is represented from early examples of mass production through the most recent design innovations. Examples form the world's foremost designers and architects of the past century such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank O. Gehry, Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu Noguchi, Le Corbusier as well as many others are included.

Vitra, a Swiss firm founded in 1934, is the most respected manufacturer of office furniture in Europe. The Vitra Design Museum was founded in 1989, and its collection of furniture ranges in date from 1820 to the present. The museum's main focus is on designs that embody the philosophy of Modernism - the abstract, utopian, functional and geometrically pure style that prevailed in the 1920s. With the demise of Modernism, from the 1970s onward the furniture styles became pluralistic, just like painting and sculpture of the same period. These works, dating from 1820s to the 1990s, are indicative of the individually creative talents that designers had. These pieces are more than just furniture; they are art objects.

100 Masterpieces form the Vitra Design Museum has been organized by the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany, and circulated in North America by Exhibitions International, NY. Support for the Columbia Museum of Art is provided by the citizens and corporations of the Midlands, the City of Columbia, Richland County, The South Carolina Arts Commission, and the Cultural Council of Richland and Lexington Counties. The museum's exhibition program is supported in part, by PHP.

For further information check our SC Institutional Gallery listings or call the museum at 803/799-2810. .

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