Our Next Program - Thursday, April 11, 2019 at ​10:00AM                              
 Peoria Riverfront Museum, 222 SW Washington St., Peoria, IL 61602

         

The Rise of the Vienna Secession: Modern Art, Architecture, and Design

Dr. Christopher Long, Martin S. Kermacy Centennial Professor in Architecture, University of Texas at Austin

In 1897, a small group of artists, architects, and designers in Vienna, among them Gustav Klimt, Joseph Maria Olbrich, and Josef Hoffmann, withdrew from the city’s established artists’ union and formed their own organization, the Vienna Secession. Over the next seven years, it was the focus of one of the most potent and far-reaching efforts in Europe to establish a radical new version of Art Nouveau, the so-called Sezessionstil (“Secession Style”). Long will discuss this fascinating and elegant style and the designers behind it.

Dr. Long studied at the universities of Graz, Munich, and Vienna, and he received his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin in 1993. From 1994 to 1995, he taught at the Central European University in Prague. His interests center on modern architectural history, with a particular emphasis on Central Europe between 1880 and the present. Trained in history rather than in architecture, his approach borrows from cultural and intellectual history, as well as political and economic history. He has studied questions of cultural representation in architecture, the larger ideological context of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century architectural theory, and the development of architectural education. Professor Long's interests also include modern design in Austria, the Czech lands, and the United States. He has worked on several exhibitions and publishes widely on a diverse range of subjects.

banner image:  Secession Building, designed by Josef Olbrich, Vienna, Austria, 1900
image to left:  poster for 14th Secession Exhibition by Alfred Roller, 1902
image below right:  reclining armchair "sitzmaschine" by Josef Hoffman 1905