Hector Guimard: Art Nouveau to Modernism

June 22, 2023 – November 5, 2023

Hector Guimard: Art Nouveau to Modernism explores the life and work of Hector Guimard (1867-1942), the French architect and designer whose name is synonymous with the French Art Nouveau movement. Bringing together furniture and design objects including jewelry, metalwork, ceramics, drawings, and textiles from collections worldwide, this is the first major American museum exhibition devoted to Guimard since 1970.

Guimard is best known for his designs for the Paris Métro entrances, but Hector Guimard: Art Nouveau to Modernism aims to explore lesser-known aspects of the designer’s life, including his entrepreneurial approach to promoting his work, the critical role played by his wife and sometimes collaborator Adeline Oppenheim, and his commitment to making beautiful design accessible in all aspects of urban life, from transportation to large-scale apartment buildings. As a visionary architect, Guimard’s dedication to the Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”) shaped his life and the sinuous curves of the Parisian landscape. Every aspect of his most famous buildings from the exterior façades to the interior furnishings and decoration were designed by Guimard himself.

Hector Guimard: Art Nouveau to Modernism is co-organized by the Richard H. Driehaus Museum and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Exhibition curator David A. Hanks places Guimard’s work and the Art Nouveau style in direct dialogue with the Gilded Age style of the Driehaus Museum’s home, the Samuel M. Nickerson Mansion. Built in 1883 at the height of the Aesthetic movement, the architects and designers of the Nickerson Mansion were focused on ideas that influenced Guimard: unifying architectural design with fine art, embracing natural forms, and harnessing new mass-production technologies as a force for social good.

The exhibition is accompanied by a beautifully illustrated retrospective of Art Nouveau architect and designer Hector Guimard available at our Museum Store. Our book is published by Yale University Press in association with the Richard H. Driehaus Museum with support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and Robert and Carolyn Burk. It features new scholarship, including an essay by Philippe Thiebaut discussing Guimard’s training in drawing and the exquisite detail of his drawn plans; an essay by Barry Bergdoll highlighting an overarching theme of the exhibition – signature vs. standardization – and addressing Guimard’s concern for the well-being of people and workers; and an essay by Sarah D. Coffin discussing Adeline Oppenheim as a partner to Hector Guimard – in both life and work – and also as a determined preserver of his legacy.

The exhibition’s presenting sponsor is Northern Trust.

The exhibition is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. It is underwritten in part by the Richard H. Driehaus Annual Exhibition Fund.

Image credit: Hector Guimard, Bracket for Bench, Model GO. c. 1912. Painted cast iron. Produced by Saint-Dizier Foundries, Saint-Dizier. The Collection of Richard H. Driehaus, Chicago 20332. Photograph by James Caulfield.

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