Wharton Esherick exhibit opens at Brandywine River Museum

Wharton Esherick’s Studio. Photo by Charles Uniatowski, courtesy of the Wharton Esherick Museum.

This story first appeared on Chadds Ford Live, one of our sister publications and was written by Rich Schwartzman.

CHADDS FORD — The new Wharton Esherick exhibit differs from most exhibits at the Brandywine River Museum of Art (BRM). There are still some hang-on-the-wall types of paintings and wood blocks, but there are also functional furniture and sculptures.

“It’s so much different than people expect…We were interested in highlighting some of the other artists working in suburban Philadelphia, rural Pennsylvania, at the same time as the Wyeths,” said BRM Senior Curator Amanda Burdan.

Wharton Esherick, considered the father of the Studio Furniture Movement, lived from 1887 to 1970. Born in Philadelphia, he later moved to Malvern where there is now a Wharton Esherick Museum, which co-organized the exhibit at BRM.

“We’re so happy to bring these works out of the studio — of course, they belong there, and you should always experience them there —arranged in a way that gives a curatorial thesis, themes to follow through in a way to see things that you would never see together in a studio.”

Esherick is considered the “father of the Studio Furniture Movement. Installation view of “The Crafted World of Wharton Esherick,” courtesy of the Brandywine Museum of Art

“The Crafted World of Wharton Esherick” exhibit includes more than 70 works and is the first to draw exclusively from the Wharton Esherick Museum’s collection of more than 3,000 pieces.

Burdan expressed how impressed she is with not only Esherick’s work but the times in which he was working, the times shared with another famous artist.

“He starts as a painter and is an artist who totally embraces and holistically takes over this aesthetic through printmaking and sculpture and furniture. And I just love what was happening simultaneously with N.C. Wyeth’s career,” she said. “It shows us this very artistic landscape of American art…We’re expanding, not just showing not just American art in general, but finding American art that has connections with our collection, with our mission, with our region.”

“These objects either had a life with Esherick for the duration of their existence, or they were out in the world but have not had a chance to make their second debut,” Zilber said. “What you have here at the Brandywine will allow [visitors] to see those objects more similar to how Esherick would have staged them in his retrospective in the 1950s, but also in the context of a bigger art museum where you can see from different vantage points, where you can really engage with the objects on their own terms.”

The Crafted World of Wharton Esherick runs through Jan. 19.