Between Two Worlds: The Vienna Secession and Harlem Renaissance

Megan Brandow-Faller, City University of New York
Janis Staggs, Neue Galerie New York

This online course, administered by Roundtable by the 92nd Street Y, highlights new scholarship from Megan Brandow-Faller and Janis Staggs, with each session tracing a remarkable personal and professional relationship that bridged the two art worlds of the Vienna Secession and Harlem Renaissance.

Discussion will consider the crucial role of the Viennese-born emigré Friederike Beer-Monti, as she directed the Artists’ Gallery in New York City and promoted cross-cultural exchange between expatriate members of the Vienna Secession and the Harlem Renaissance. We’ll discover how Beer-Monti's unique role as connector, curator and facilitator led to the fascinating interchange of ideas between these two major 20th century art movements.

Additionally, the course will examine the professional-personal relationship between Viennese Jewish émigré and art educator Viktor Lowenfeld and artist John Biggers, shown in the first exhibition of contemporary African-American art at MoMA in 1943. Lowenfeld introduced Biggers to Hampton’s rich collections of African art and Black luminaries like Alain Locke – leading to a storied career as a muralist and teacher.

About The Speakers

Megan Brandow-Faller is Professor of History at the City University of New York Kingsborough. Her research focuses on art and design in Secessionist and interwar Vienna, including children’s art, folk art, the expressionist ceramics of the Wiener Werkstätte, and women’s art education. She is the author of The Female Secession: Art and the Decorative at the Viennese Women’s Academy, and served as co-editor (with Laura Morowitz) of Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art Architecture and Design. Her newest project, Child Creativity in the Visual Arts from Secessionist Vienna to Postwar America, focuses on the dissemination and popularization of Secessionist ideas of child creativity in postwar America.

Janis Staggs is Director of Curatorial and Manager of Publications at Neue Galerie New York. A specialist in the decorative arts, her work focuses on the intersection between the fine and the decorative arts. During her tenure, she has curated a number of exhibitions, including “Wiener Werkstätte Jewelry,” “Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer: The Woman in Gold,” and “Klimt Landscapes,” and co-curated “Ernst Ludwig Kirchner” (with Jill Lloyd), and “Wiener Werkstätte, 1903-1932: The Luxury of Beauty” (with Christian Witt-Dörring). She has contributed essays to various Neue Galerie catalogues and outside publications.

Event Details

This two session online course is administered by Roundtable by the 92nd Street Y, New York, a world-class cultural and community center where people all over the world connect through culture, arts, entertainment and conversation.

Session 1: Tuesday, August 11, 11 a.m.
Session 2: Tuesday, August 18, 11 a.m.

Enrollment

$92 per person.
Includes access to two live 60 minute online lectures with real-time Q&A. Session recordings will be provided to registrants afterward.