Art News

Installation of nineteenth-century modern objects and furniture on view at Brooklyn Museum

BROOKLYN, N.Y.- Featuring more than forty items from the Brooklyn Museum’s collection of American and European decorative arts, 19th-Century Modern will focus on the emergence of Modernism, an aesthetic based in part on the machine as a source of artistic inspiration. The installation will include objects from the early nineteenth century to the twentieth century to demonstrate the theme. Although this new machine aesthetic began in the early nineteenth century, it wasn’t until the last quarter of the century that the trend towards Modernist design accelerated. In addition to differences in the appearance of objects, there were important modifications in how objects were produced and marketed. The works in the installation illustrate the development of the modern industrial world and the emergence of a taste for abstraction. Designers and consumers began to appreciate simple decoration based either on