Collection: Hector Guimard: Art Nouveau to Modernism

 The Richard H. Driehaus Museum

On View through 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.