Summer 2011

Think of “Philadelphia” and “furniture” and your mind will likely turn immediately to master eighteenth-century cabinetmakers such as Benjamin Randolph and the fabled 1770  furniture for General John Cadwalader, attributed to him. But the City of Brotherly Love and its environs were also home to the great proto-modernist architect Frank Furness, the site of the 1932 Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building by George Howe and William Lescaze—widely regarded as the first International Style office tower in the United States—the offices of architect Louis Kahn, and the studio of designer Wharton Esherick, in the suburb of Paoli. And as a new monograph, Collecting Modern: Design at the Philadelphia Museum of Art since 1876, by curator Kathryn Bloom Hiesinger, demonstrates, the city’s great cultural monument contains a treasure trove of modernist designs. Hiesinger’s book is essentially a history of the modern design exhibitions presented by, and the holdings of, the museum. The latter range from wonders such as Esherick’s 1936 expressionist fireplace and doorway from the library of the Curtis and Nellie Lee Bok house to contemporary work by the neo-baroque Dutch designer Toord Boontje. Simply put: this is a marvelous book about a marvelous collection.

Collecting Modern: Design at the Philadelphia Museum of Art since 1876, by Kathryn Bloom Hiesinger. Yale University Press, 304 pages, $65