Wharton Esherick Museum
Programs
Program 1 [2020]
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Museum was shuttered for much of the year, beginning just a week after our 2020 season opened in early March. Once our local government allowed, and we had confidence in our planning, we did reopen briefly from September to November, but we made the decision to remain closed for the remainder of the season following an exposure from a visitor who tested positive shortly after being on site. We worked quickly to build out our website, adding a section of online resources for educators which included virtual presentations, blog posts, a bibliography, primary source documents and archives, selected writing about Esherick, video resources, and links to museums with Esherick work in their collections. We added a page with resources for the general public as well, including our growing Collections Highlights and At-Home Activities for all ages. Additionally, we took our programs and exhibitions online and introduced virtual content throughout, which we now offer as a permanent part of our museum activities. In addition to a virtual exhibition, virtual tours and lectures for educational groups, we also hosted virtual events including; a conversation with Pennsylvania Museum of Fine Arts Museum Director Brooke Davis Anderson, artist, and faculty member John Grieg about Esherick's life, practice, and his ability to change with the times; an online experience hosted by Atlas Obscura to explore Esherick's Studio; a conversation between Nonie Gadsden, the Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Emily Zilber; and a spotlight program in which WEM staff highlighted a selection of Esherick's prints to take a quick dive into the stories and influences behind these favorite scenes. Following a master interpretive and campus planning process started in 2019, the Wharton Esherick Museum had begun a curatorial exploration in early 2020 to shape the programmatic direction of Esherick's home and studio. We centered our interpretive planning process around the idea that Esherick's legacy is considerably broader than the founder of the modern studio furniture movement, for which he is known. An artistic polymath, he is in fact considered one of the foundational figures of twentieth-century contemporary craft and design. In the fall of 2019, the Museum hired Emily Zilber as Director of Curatorial Affairs and Strategic Partnerships. Ms. Zilber is an accomplished curator, writer, and educator in the craft world. She was recently a Guest Curator at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and teaches at the Tyler School of Art. Emily was the first Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and has also held positions at Cranbrook Academy of Art. As a curator who has worked extensively with artists and has strong ties in the museum and craft communities, Ms. Zilber positioned us to understand how we can best use the site to provide not just an aesthetic experience for our visitors, but also prompt them towards active creativity. In the last 14 months we have had held curator conversations with institutions across the country which hold Esherick work in their collections, presented talks with artists from across the country who cite Esherick as a major influence on their practice, gained audience members brand-new to our organization in terms of awareness and demographics, and made meaningful curatorial and interpretive connection between Esherick's hand-built home and studio a beloved National Historic Landmark for Architecture typically seen by 5,000 in-person visitors and the enduring mark he left on American art, architecture, craft, and design.Though we have engaged with overall fewer individuals than we would have seen onsite for tours in a year, typically 5,000 visitors annually, we have seen some encouraging metrics. Our virtual attendance rates have continued to rise steadily, almost doubling in the first two months of 2021, and attrition rates have lowered. We know that some people register in order to receive the recording and watch a program on their own schedule and are learning to account for how people consume virtual content. Our social media engagement has risen steadily, with followers up between 15 and 25% across platforms and post engagements up about the same percentage, depending on content. We have seen a substantial increase, over 30%, in our mailing list subscribers in the last year, as well. The COVID-19 pandemic and its ongoing impact continues to shape our plans for the current year and leaves many of our activities uncertain. We hope to open for tours in the late spring or early summer with reduced numbers, as we had done in the fall of 2020, and will determine if additional in-person programming can be safely offered as the situation progresses. Like many historic homes, the Esherick studio is composed of intimate, domestic spaces in which it is almost impossible not to touch artist-designed architectural elements (like doorknobs and bannisters) or be in close proximity to other visitors. Furthermore, a key way that we have shared Esherick's message is by allowing our visitors limited tactile experience with some of his work. While we have always limited the size of the groups allowed in these spaces, as well as the objects available for touching, this is clearly something we are rethinking in concert with the broader museum community and especially our 44 peer institutions in the Historic Artists Homes and Studios (HAHS) consortium. Our exhibitions for 2021 will move primarily online, with our annual Imprint (March through May) student printmaking exhibit moving entirely online for 2021 and incorporating new programming, including lesson plans, presentations for students by professional printmakers, and a virtual opening. The 2021 Annual Juried Woodworking Exhibition (May through September '21) will be a hybrid virtual/physical model in which we will have 3-6 pieces (award winners) in the Visitor Center, exhibited along with some Esherick pieces which embody the theme of the show. The remaining 20-25 works, from a total submission pool of 117, will be shown in a virtual exhibition that includes images and video of the work. This hybrid virtual/in-person model allows us to mount a more thoughtful show of works better suited to the small gallery space which also serves as the museum store and sales desk and ultimately has the capacity to reach many more people and provide more visibility and support to the artists who have entered the show. Other benefits are being able to include pieces which would not have physically fit in the Visitor Center gallery space, or would have been cost prohibitive to ship, and the ability to do more via social media and online programs to celebrate the artists and the exhibition itself. The exhibition jurors are: Emily Zilber, Director of Curatorial Affairs and Strategic Partnerships, at the Wharton Esherick Museum brings over 15 years of experience building curatorial projects and programs focused on contemporary art and craft for institutions including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum; teaching in the graduate program at Tyler School of Art and Architecture; and board service for CraftNOW Philadelphia and the Center for Craft, a national organization dedicated to advancing the field of craft through fostering new ideas and backing the next generation of makers, curators, and critics. Miguel Gmez-Ibez served as president of the North Bennet Street School (NBSS), a renowned school of craftsmanship in Boston, from 2006-2019. He currently serves as President Emeritus. Miguel is the first NBSS graduate (cabinet and furniture making, 1999) to lead the institution. Miguel holds a master's degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and an undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University. Before enrolling at NBSS, he worked as an architect for 26 years. His furniture has been featured in House and Garden, American Craft, and other magazines, galleries, and museums across the country. Samantha De Tillio is a curator and writer specializing in modern and contemporary craft. She is Assistant Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design, where her upcoming exhibition Beth Lipman: Collective Elegy (May 14, 2020 to March 28, 2021) is the artist's first mid-career survey. She is also a Contributing Editor for GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly and her ongoing personal research includes the first in-depth study of the life and fiber sculpture of Dorian Zachai (1932-2015). De Tillio has an MA in the History of Decorative Arts from the Smithsonian Associates with George Mason University, and a BA in History from the University of Albany. She has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian NatiGeographiesNot indicatedDatesJan 1, 2020 – Dec 31, 2020Source990No causes providedNo populations provided–$351.9KPublic Programs And Artist Collaborations
IN 2023, WEM OFFERED NEW PUBLIC PROGRAMS INCLUDING A BOOK CLUB INSPIRED BY THE LITERARY FIGURES IN ESHERICK'S NETWORK, A EURYTHMY DANCE WORKSHOP, STORYTELLING IN THE STUDIO INCORPORATING WHARTON ESHERICK'S ORAL HISTORIES, AND A CONCERT SERIES OF CLASSICAL MUSIC IN PARTNERSHIP WITH NEARBY URSINUS COLLEGE. WE PRESENTED THE WOOD IS SINGING IN COLOR, A NEW SITE-RESPONSIVE PERFORMANCE BY ACCLAIMED ARTIST MARTHA MCDONALD, MARKING THE FIRST LIVE PERFORMANCE BY A WEM ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE, A PROGRAM THE MUSEUM BEGAN IN 2021 TO INVITE MEANINGFUL CONVERSATION BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY MAKERS AND THE MUSEUM'S COLLECTIONS. WEM ALSO COMPLETED SEVERAL SIGNIFICANT PRESERVATION PROJECTS ON THE CAMPUS.GeographiesNot indicatedDatesJan 1, 2023 – Dec 31, 2023Source990No causes providedNo populations provided–$720.2K
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