Abstract

      The Jazz Bowl is an icon of the Jazz Age and one of the most notable of Viktor Schreckengost’s ceramic designs. The bowl has important historical associations beyond the fact that it was originally made for Eleanor Roosevelt. Viktor’s inspiration for the whimsical iconography was a specific event in time—the night he saw musician Cab Calloway perform at New York City’s Cotton Club. Schreckengost not only commemorated a personal memory but also captured the cultural milieu of an era bursting with a restless vitality and fascination with urbanity and modernity. This lecture will place the various editions of the Jazz Bowl in a cultural context and explore the age that so profoundly inspired Schreckengost and his contemporaries.

Biography: Brandy Culp

      Brandy S. Culp is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow in the Department of American Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. She has also worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art researching the exhibition, Art and the Empire City, New York, 1825-1861. Ms. Culp received her Master of Arts degree in the decorative arts from the Bard Graduate Center, where she focused on American art. She has a great interest in material culture and design, and she has worked diligently to research and interpret the Art Institute’s early twentieth-century collection.