Quick Arts Center to Host First Major Exhibition of Hildreth Meiére
By Tom Missel
Director of Media Relations/Marketing
The first major exhibition of the work of 20th century art deco muralist and mosaicist, painter and decorative artist Hildreth Meiére will open a 10-month exhibition Sept. 4 at The Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts at St. Bonaventure University.
The exhibition, “Walls Speak: The Narrative Art of Hildreth Meiére,” will, for the first time, bring together in one exhibition the sketches, studies in gouache, full-scale cartoons and models of the work of Meiére, who created pieces for churches, government and commercial buildings, world’s fairs, restaurants and cocktail lounges, and even ocean liners in a career that spanned five decades.
The university has published a full-color, 112-page catalog, which is available to the public, to accompany the exhibition.
Meiére, who died in 1961, had more than 100 major commissions from leading architects for projects throughout the United States. Her major existing works include the vestibule dome in the Nebraska State Capitol and the dome in the Great Hall of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., as well as works in the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York, and Radio City Music Hall.
“For the better part of my adult life, Hildreth Meiére has been like one of those neighbors we greet regularly but whom we don’t get to know very well or whose name we somehow fail to learn. And then suddenly, one revelatory day, we realize that a person we’ve taken for granted has had an impact on the world around us beyond our imagining,” said Joseph A. LoSchiavo, executive director of The Quick Center.
LoSchiavo was married 35 years ago in front of a Hildreth Meiére reredos in the Fordham University Church.
Meiére (1892-1961) ranks among the very small number of women artists such as Violet Oakley, Berenice Abbott, Isabel Bishop and Georgia O’Keeffe whose achievements gained the recognition of the established art world during the first half of the last century.
In her lifetime, Meiére was considered the most famous, distinguished and prolific art deco muralist in the country, one of America’s leading practitioners of the art of mosaic, and one of the country’s most gifted architectural embellishers. She is an important figure in the history of American liturgical art and one of its most ecumenical practitioners.
The Quick Center exhibition contains 106 works representing 25 of Meiére’s most important commissions. Of the works, 19 are borrowed from 12 institutions, 46 are on loan from seven private collections, and 41 are large-scale photographs.
The task before exhibition curator Catherine C. Brawer was to bring the collection to life.
“The challenge in presenting the work of Hildreth Meiére has been in making her mosaics, murals, ceramic tile decoration, stained glass, and exterior metal and enamel sculptures that adorn major buildings across the country come alive for the visitor,” said Brawer. “We do this through preparatory sketches, painted cartoons, models, large mosaic samples, and painted altarpieces.”
“The inclusion of two finished mosaics, a woven tapestry, and five altarpieces demonstrates a progression from Ms. Meiére’s exquisite studies on paper to the magnificent final work executed by craftsman upon whose skill she depended to realize her original conception,” she said.
“The inclusion of two finished mosaics and a woven tapestry demonstrates a progression from Ms. Meiére’s exquisite studies on paper to the magnificent final work executed by craftsmen upon whose skill she depended to realize her original conception,” Brawer added.
Though Meiére’s specialty was the ancient art of mosaic, she created designs for painted wall murals, marble floors, glazed terracotta tiles, metal relief sculpture, stained glass, leather doors, and wool tapestry. In New York, her most famous designs are the mixed-metal and enamel roundels of Dance, Drama, and Song for the 50th Street limestone facade of Radio City Music Hall.
Other works in New York include the altar-frontal for the Lady Chapel of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, mosaics and stained glass for St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, glass decorative mosaics for the arch and ark for Temple Emanu-El, and glass mosaics for the walls of the banking room of The Bank of New York (formerly the Irving Trust Company) at One Wall Street.
Her murals also appeared in Chicago’s 1933 Century of Progress Fair and the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair.
Meiére’s metal decoration for the no-longer-existing RKO Theatre at Rockefeller Plaza was recreated by artist Gary Sussman in 1989 and is now visible below ground in the Avenue of Americas Concourse of Rockefeller Center.
Meiére’s major commissions outside of New York include the Nebraska State Capitol at Lincoln, perhaps her largest and most outstanding work; the Resurrection Chapel of the National Cathedral and the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.; the Travelers Insurance Company in Hartford, Conn.; and The Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, which has one of the largest installations of mosaics in the world, to which Meiére’s contribution is larger than any other artist’s.
During World War II, she supervised the creation of more than 500 portable altarpieces for military chaplains of all denominations, 70 of which were her designs. In the era of transatlantic ocean liners, she created murals for the USS America and the USS United States.
With one exception – the abstract red Banking Room at One Wall Street in Manhattan, for which Meiére was color consultant – all of her designs were narrative. For details and a complete list of Meière commissions, go to www.hildrethmeiere.com/ComissionsByState.html.
Her career was launched in 1923 when architect Bertram G. Goodhue (1869-1924) commissioned her to decorate the dome of the Great Hall of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Her last executed commission was in 1960 when she designed three marble mosaic panels, damaged in removal, recounting the legend of Hercules sailing past the Rock of Gibraltar for the lobby of Prudential Plaza in Newark.
Meiére was the first woman honored with The Fine Arts Medal of the American Institute of Architects and the first woman appointed to the New York City Art Commission. She served as president of both the National Society of Mural Painters and the Liturgical Arts Society (the latter founded in her studio).
She was first vice president of the Architectural League of New York (and one of its first female members), a director of the Municipal Arts Society, and an associate of the National Academy of Design. For five years, she was the director of the Department of Mural Painting at the Beaux Arts Institute of Design.
Meiére also served on the boards of the Art Students League, the Municipal Arts Society, the School Art League, and the Advisory Committee of the Cooper Union Art School. Born in New York City, Meiére began her education at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Manhattanville and studied art in Florence, Italy. She continued her studies at the Art Students League in New York, the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, the New York School of Applied Design for Women, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Beaux Arts Institute of Design in New York.
“Walls Speak: The Narrative Art of Hildreth Meiére” is funded in part by the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The catalog, which is available for $35 plus $4.50 shipping and handling, was funded in part by a grant from the International Hildreth Meiére Association. Copies of the catalog are available by e-mailing quick@sbu.edu or by calling The Quick Center at (716) 375-2494.
Pictured are Hildreth Meiére self-portrait; Nebraska State Capitol vestibule dome. (Photo by Hildreth Meiére Dunn); and the altarpiece of St. John the Evangelist by Hildreth Meiére, from St. John’s Grace Episcopal Church in Buffalo, N.Y.
Director of Media Relations/Marketing
The first major exhibition of the work of 20th century art deco muralist and mosaicist, painter and decorative artist Hildreth Meiére will open a 10-month exhibition Sept. 4 at The Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts at St. Bonaventure University. The exhibition, “Walls Speak: The Narrative Art of Hildreth Meiére,” will, for the first time, bring together in one exhibition the sketches, studies in gouache, full-scale cartoons and models of the work of Meiére, who created pieces for churches, government and commercial buildings, world’s fairs, restaurants and cocktail lounges, and even ocean liners in a career that spanned five decades.
The university has published a full-color, 112-page catalog, which is available to the public, to accompany the exhibition.
Meiére, who died in 1961, had more than 100 major commissions from leading architects for projects throughout the United States. Her major existing works include the vestibule dome in the Nebraska State Capitol and the dome in the Great Hall of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., as well as works in the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York, and Radio City Music Hall.
“For the better part of my adult life, Hildreth Meiére has been like one of those neighbors we greet regularly but whom we don’t get to know very well or whose name we somehow fail to learn. And then suddenly, one revelatory day, we realize that a person we’ve taken for granted has had an impact on the world around us beyond our imagining,” said Joseph A. LoSchiavo, executive director of The Quick Center.
LoSchiavo was married 35 years ago in front of a Hildreth Meiére reredos in the Fordham University Church.
Meiére (1892-1961) ranks among the very small number of women artists such as Violet Oakley, Berenice Abbott, Isabel Bishop and Georgia O’Keeffe whose achievements gained the recognition of the established art world during the first half of the last century.
In her lifetime, Meiére was considered the most famous, distinguished and prolific art deco muralist in the country, one of America’s leading practitioners of the art of mosaic, and one of the country’s most gifted architectural embellishers. She is an important figure in the history of American liturgical art and one of its most ecumenical practitioners.
The Quick Center exhibition contains 106 works representing 25 of Meiére’s most important commissions. Of the works, 19 are borrowed from 12 institutions, 46 are on loan from seven private collections, and 41 are large-scale photographs.
The task before exhibition curator Catherine C. Brawer was to bring the collection to life.
“The challenge in presenting the work of Hildreth Meiére has been in making her mosaics, murals, ceramic tile decoration, stained glass, and exterior metal and enamel sculptures that adorn major buildings across the country come alive for the visitor,” said Brawer. “We do this through preparatory sketches, painted cartoons, models, large mosaic samples, and painted altarpieces.”
“The inclusion of two finished mosaics, a woven tapestry, and five altarpieces demonstrates a progression from Ms. Meiére’s exquisite studies on paper to the magnificent final work executed by craftsman upon whose skill she depended to realize her original conception,” she said.
“The inclusion of two finished mosaics and a woven tapestry demonstrates a progression from Ms. Meiére’s exquisite studies on paper to the magnificent final work executed by craftsmen upon whose skill she depended to realize her original conception,” Brawer added.
Though Meiére’s specialty was the ancient art of mosaic, she created designs for painted wall murals, marble floors, glazed terracotta tiles, metal relief sculpture, stained glass, leather doors, and wool tapestry. In New York, her most famous designs are the mixed-metal and enamel roundels of Dance, Drama, and Song for the 50th Street limestone facade of Radio City Music Hall.
Other works in New York include the altar-frontal for the Lady Chapel of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, mosaics and stained glass for St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, glass decorative mosaics for the arch and ark for Temple Emanu-El, and glass mosaics for the walls of the banking room of The Bank of New York (formerly the Irving Trust Company) at One Wall Street.
Her murals also appeared in Chicago’s 1933 Century of Progress Fair and the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair.
Meiére’s metal decoration for the no-longer-existing RKO Theatre at Rockefeller Plaza was recreated by artist Gary Sussman in 1989 and is now visible below ground in the Avenue of Americas Concourse of Rockefeller Center.
Meiére’s major commissions outside of New York include the Nebraska State Capitol at Lincoln, perhaps her largest and most outstanding work; the Resurrection Chapel of the National Cathedral and the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.; the Travelers Insurance Company in Hartford, Conn.; and The Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, which has one of the largest installations of mosaics in the world, to which Meiére’s contribution is larger than any other artist’s.
During World War II, she supervised the creation of more than 500 portable altarpieces for military chaplains of all denominations, 70 of which were her designs. In the era of transatlantic ocean liners, she created murals for the USS America and the USS United States.
With one exception – the abstract red Banking Room at One Wall Street in Manhattan, for which Meiére was color consultant – all of her designs were narrative. For details and a complete list of Meière commissions, go to www.hildrethmeiere.com/ComissionsByState.html.
Her career was launched in 1923 when architect Bertram G. Goodhue (1869-1924) commissioned her to decorate the dome of the Great Hall of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Her last executed commission was in 1960 when she designed three marble mosaic panels, damaged in removal, recounting the legend of Hercules sailing past the Rock of Gibraltar for the lobby of Prudential Plaza in Newark.
Meiére was the first woman honored with The Fine Arts Medal of the American Institute of Architects and the first woman appointed to the New York City Art Commission. She served as president of both the National Society of Mural Painters and the Liturgical Arts Society (the latter founded in her studio).
She was first vice president of the Architectural League of New York (and one of its first female members), a director of the Municipal Arts Society, and an associate of the National Academy of Design. For five years, she was the director of the Department of Mural Painting at the Beaux Arts Institute of Design.
Meiére also served on the boards of the Art Students League, the Municipal Arts Society, the School Art League, and the Advisory Committee of the Cooper Union Art School. Born in New York City, Meiére began her education at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Manhattanville and studied art in Florence, Italy. She continued her studies at the Art Students League in New York, the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, the New York School of Applied Design for Women, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Beaux Arts Institute of Design in New York.
“Walls Speak: The Narrative Art of Hildreth Meiére” is funded in part by the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The catalog, which is available for $35 plus $4.50 shipping and handling, was funded in part by a grant from the International Hildreth Meiére Association. Copies of the catalog are available by e-mailing quick@sbu.edu or by calling The Quick Center at (716) 375-2494.
Pictured are Hildreth Meiére self-portrait; Nebraska State Capitol vestibule dome. (Photo by Hildreth Meiére Dunn); and the altarpiece of St. John the Evangelist by Hildreth Meiére, from St. John’s Grace Episcopal Church in Buffalo, N.Y.
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