The Arts & Crafts Movement
The Brandywine River Valley & Philadelphia
IAC’s 26th Annual Arts and Crafts Conference
Sunday – Thursday, October 13 – 17, 2024
IAC’s 26th annual Arts & Crafts Conference will visit the Brandywine River Valley & Philadelphia to consider the centrality of the region in the American Arts & Crafts Movement. Tracing the history of the Movement from its origins in Britain to its manifestations in the Philadelphia area and its formative influences on the Studio Craft Movement (and here, the work and legacy of Wharton Esherick [1887 – 1970] in particular), and coinciding with the opening of a major Esherick exhibition at Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art, the conference will tour the following:
- The Wharton Esherick Museum and studio.
- Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art (PAFA). Designed by Frank Furness and George Hewitt, PAFA (where Esherick trained) is one of the most significant structures of the American Arts & Crafts period.
- The Arts & Crafts community of Rose Valley, the milieu in which Esherick practiced.
- The George Nakashima House, Studio and Workshop. Nakashima began his furniture business in 1945 as a reaction to “20th-century modern,” with the goal of reclaiming the philosophy of periods past in which the maker’s eye and hand determined his world in relation to the universe.
- The studios of NC Wyeth, muralist and illustrator, and his son Andrew whose paintings and watercolors captured a particular sense of place.
- The Moravian Pottery & Tile Works.
- The Michener Museum, where in addition to its major collection of American Art, attendees will be able to view the institution’s significant holdings of the regional frame maker Bernard Badura.
- Frank Lloyd Wright’s Beth Sholom Synagogue.
- Louis Kahn’s residential commission for Margaret Esherick.
As has been our practice since the beginning, we will explore the artistic and philosophical underpinnings of the Movement and how it informed the art and architecture that followed. Key to this consideration are the commonalities in ethos and approach among different practitioners and how the Movement continues, reflected in contemporary culture in ways both original and nonmimetic. Influences of the Movement on subsequent schools, styles, or artistic approaches—the Rural Modern, for example—will also be considered. The Conference will underscore the importance of preservation and of the continuing influence of historic architecture in the contemporary urban and suburban landscapes.
IAC thanks the Conference sponsors (as of July 22, 2024):
The Marie + John Zimmermann Foundation, American Fine Art Magazine, and Citizen Watch.
Program subject to change.
