Marcel Breuer: A Special Installation of 1930s Furniture

From the iconic tubular steel Club Chair of the 1920s to the bold, terraced form of the Whitney Museum in New York of the mid-1960s, Hungarian-born Marcel Breuer (1902–1981) was responsible for some of the last century’s most influential and recognizable designs. On the 100th anniversary of Breuer’s birth, the Busch-Reisinger Museum presents a special installation of recently acquired furniture from the 1930s, examples of the designer’s experiments with bent and cut-out plywood constructions. The elegant Chaise Longue of 1936, designed in England shortly after Breuer left Nazi-controlled Germany, is shown together with the more robust Dormitory Furniture for Rhoads Hall, Bryn Mawr College of 1938, one of his first commissions upon arriving in the United States.

Organized by Kim Conaty, Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, with Peter Nisbet, Daimler-Benz Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum.