Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art, Meriden, CT

Painting toward architecture exhibition as installed at the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston (January-February 1950). Courtesy the Karl Kamrath Collection, University of Texas at Austin architectural archives. (See FN "Photo A" for list of works in the photo.) (This photo was unexpectedly found by R. J. Preece / artdesigncafe in c. 2017, and among a set for this exhibition. These photos remain the only ones known to have survived showing an integrated art / architecture installation of the PtA exhibitions.)

Overview

Emily Hall Tremaine was the art director of the Miller Company in Meriden, CT (1944 - c. 1960), and working with her CEO husband Burton Tremaine, she organized a traveling exhibition, “Painting Toward Architecture”, for the developing Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art in 1947-52.

The show, which featured some of the biggest names in modern art and architecture, was seen in [28(+) venues] across the U.S.. Combining experimental art and design crossovers, it also achieved a very sophisticated fusion of art, design, and publicity. The show and related initiatives were dynamic, pioneering, and entrepreneurial. Buried under thick, historical dust until 2017, Modernist scholars are taking a closer look at the project.

[Photo A] to the left, Georgia O’Keeffe’s New York night (or City night), (1926); below, cropped view of possibly interior stairwell at Villa Savoye, Poissy, France, by Le Corbusier (1929); foreground, Mary Callery’s Water ballet, (1947); to the far right, unidentified artworks; middleground panel, left to right: photo mural of Cafe de Unie, Rotterdam; Piet Mondrian’s Composition, (1935-42); Perle Fine’s analytical charts on Victory Boogie Woogie, (c. 1947); two small sculptures, left: Jacques Lipchitz’s Pegasus (study), (1944); right: Mary Callery’s Amity (Study), (1946); middle ground, to the left: Fernand Léger’s Le petit déjeuner, (1921); to the right: more analytical charts by Perle Fine; background above, to the left: top of yet undefined representation of Piet Mondrian’s Victory Boogie Woogie, (1942-44), possibly by Perle Fine; top right on sloping ceiling: photo murals, possibly designs including those by Le Corbusier, Rietveld, and Gropius.

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