EVENTS & EXHIBITIONS

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October 1, 2005 through March 19, 2006 Exhibition Explores Innovative and Expressive Brass Furniture and Accessories. Clock, ca. 1880-85. Brass, silver plate, other metals Bradley & Hubbard Manufacturing Company, Meriden Connecticut (active 1854-1940), marked: (on works) "BRADLEY & HUBBARD MFG Co/New York" 16 x 10 x 6 in. Collection of Robert Tuggle and Paul Jeromack. A Brass Menagerie: Metalwork of the Aesthetic Movement, a groundbreaking exhibition that explores the phenomenal popularity of innovative and expressive brass and mixed-metal furniture and accessories that became ubiquitous in fashionable 1880s American interiors. The 77 objects in A Brass Menagerie, from the MWPAI collection as well as borrowed from 13 private and five other museum collections from across the United States, illustrate the rage for the Japanese style and the reform concepts that swept through all aspects of art during the Gilded Age. This is the first time most of the objects will be publicly exhibited. The exhibition, organized by Museum of Art decorative arts curator Anna Tobin D'Ambrosio, is devoted to the innovative and artistic applications of industrial metals in the form of what was called "art brass" or "artistic bronze goods." The terms, coined by manufacturers and retailers, refer to visually and materially complex metal furniture and accessories made in response to consumer demand for decorative arts in the Aesthetic taste.

A BRASS MENAGERIE CATALOGUE A fully illustrated catalogue, funded by the Barrie and Deedee Wigmore Foundation, accompanies A Brass Menagerie: Metalwork of the Aesthetic Movement exhibition. The publication, with more than 100 color images, discusses the development of the American art brass industry, the use of these accessories in the home, and presents background on many of the most important manufacturers of these objects. An essay in the catalogue addresses the complex finishes on art brass objects and offers new research into the conservation mixed-metal decorative arts. The 96-page catalogue can be purchased form MWPAI Gift Gallery. Order #2273 $29.95 MWPAI Gift Gallery