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Centennial Exhibitions Explore the Ongoing Influence of Designer’s Work
Wolfsonian FIU Press Release, March 13, 2006
His designs for bicycles, dinnerware, ceramics, and toys—and many, many more consumer items—have been enjoyed by innumerable Americans for decades. And yet, most people don’t know his name. The great industrial designer Viktor Schreckengost will be one hundred years old this June, and he’s coming to Miami Beach next week as part of a national celebration of the centenary of his birth.
Schreckengost and his wife, Gene, will visit The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, 1001 Washington Avenue, on Tuesday, March 14 to formalize a promised gift to the museum of two studies for a trophy Schreckengost designed in 1939 for a Miami-based race for female pilots. The drawings will be on view through June 2006 as part of the national celebration of Schreckengost's one-hundredth birthday. The trophy, owned by museum founder and collector Mitchell Wolfson Jr., is currently traveling as part of the exhibition Modernism in American Silver: 20th-Century Design, organized by the Dallas Art Museum. In November, the drawings and trophy will be united when Modernism in American Silver comes to The Wolfsonian.
This was Schreckengost’s first major commission for figurative sculpture. Known as the Culver Air Trophy, the award was completed in February 1939 and was presented to the winner of a fifty-mile straight course air race, a new event in the Miami All-American Air Maneuvers competition. The silver-plated bronze trophy features a soaring recumbent female representing the spirit of flight.
The two drawings that will be exhibited at The Wolfsonian depict the goddess-like head of a woman crowned with laurels, as well as three variations of the tapering pedestal, topped by a female holding an airplane. The competition winner received a small model of the airplane, and three-time winners were entitled to keep the trophy.
The Miami All-America Air maneuvers competition took place at Glenn Curtiss Field, also the starting point for Amelia Earhart’s ill-fated attempt to circumnavigate the world in May 1937. Later named for the pioneering aviatrix, the airfield closed in 1959.
The Wolfsonian will join more than 120 institutions in an unprecedented series of exhibitions representing the work of this most important and influential American designer. Over the course of one hundred days, venues across the fifty states will showcase Schreckengost’s art and design works, culminating in various Centennial Exhibition celebrations around Cleveland and northeast Ohio.
Viktor Schreckengost is perhaps best known today as the creator of the Jazz Bowl, a seminal piece of American Art Deco ceramics that he created for Cleveland’s Cowan Pottery at the behest of Eleanor Roosevelt in 1930. Drawing on his trips to Manhattan, where he took in shows at the legendary Cotton Club, Schreckengost etched the bowl with soaring buildings, musical motifs, and an ocean liner—a striking vision of New York City in the Jazz Age. Originally priced at $50 (no small sum during the Depression), in 2004 Sotheby’s sold one for $254,000, and it is now part of the permanent collections of many of the nation’s most prominent museums.
But as iconic as the Jazz Bowl is, it represents just one small part of Schreckengost’s enormous contribution to American design – and perhaps a misleading one at that. Among Schreckengost’s most important designs were the first mass-produced dinnerware line (for American Limoges), the first cab-over-engine truck (for White Motors), and the first economical pedal cars for children. He also broke new ground with printing presses, electrical fans, lawn chairs, seated lawn mowers, and the many models he developed for the world’s largest bicycle manufacturer, Murray.
For more information on The Viktor Schreckengost National Centennial Exhibition, please contact Philip Barr at the Viktor Schreckengost Foundation – 866-324-9444.
For more on Viktor Schreckengost, his work, and The Viktor Schreckengost Foundation, please visit www.viktorschreckengost.org.
About The Wolfsonian–Florida International University
The Wolfsonian is a museum and research center that uses objects to illustrate the persuasive power of art and design, to explore what it means to be modern, and to tell the story of social, political and technological changes that have transformed the world. The 100,000 artifacts that comprise the Wolfsonian’s collections range from fine art, graphic design and political propaganda to furniture, rare books and ephemeral materials such as postcards and travel brochures.
The Wolfsonian is located at 1001 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, Fla. Admission is $7 adults; $5 seniors, students, and children six-12; free for Wolfsonian members, State University System of Florida staff and students with ID, children under six, and Miami Beach residents with ID. The museum is open Monday, Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday from noon-6pm; Thursday and Friday from noon-9pm; and is closed on Wednesday. Contact us at 305.531.1001 or visit us online at www.wolfsonian.org.
The Wolfsonian receives ongoing support from the State of Florida; Department of State; Division of Cultural Affairs; Florida Arts Council; Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs through the Cultural Affairs Council; the Mayor and the Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners; the Mayor and City Commission of the City of Miami Beach and the Miami Beach Cultural Arts Council; Crispin Porter + Bogusky; Dacra and the Miami Design District; Continental Airlines, the preferred airline of The Wolfsonian; the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Foundation; Artécity, for inspired condo living; Carnival Foundation; and RBK Productions.
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