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Object Timeline

-0001	We photographed this object.
1947	Work on this object began.
1991	We acquired this object.
2015	We photographed this object.
2024	You found it!

Dancer Brooch Brooch

This is a brooch. It was designed by Ed Wiener. It is dated 1947 and we acquired it in 1991. Its medium is silver. It is a part of the Product Design and Decorative Arts department.

Self-taught jewelry designer Ed Wiener was part of the 1940s bohemian modernist movement of Provincetown, Massachusetts, and downtown Manhattan. He learned to make jewelry using plumbers’ and carpenters’ tools, and retained an affinity for the craftsmanship of design. The abstract form is based on dance photographer Barbara Morgan’s 1940 image of Martha Graham, a now famous portrait. Graham was a leader of early twentieth-century modern dance. Rather than display smooth, lyrical motions, she focused on the contraction and release of muscles, resulting in a mix of hard, angular and soft body formations considered radical at the time. Dance is necessarily transient, but through photography, Morgan instilled permanence in a striking moment; Wiener’s abstraction of that moment gives it a new life, a new movement, and a new permanence. In the moment captured, Graham’s body is horizontal, with her right elbow bent and her hand to her head and her left arm stretched straight back as her left leg kicks into the air and her long dress flows, creating a wing-like shape behind her. In Wiener’s rendition, sheet silver forms the body, dress, and right arm while one wire relays the head and left arm and a second the skirt ruffle.

It is credited Gift of Michele Wiener.

Chair (USA)
slumped plate glass, metal, textile.
Museum purchase through gift of George R. Kravis II and from General....
2013-1-1

Metal brooch made of flat, thin silver metal pieces that connect to form geometric designs. The main elements are a rectangle that is taller than it is wide with two identical right triangles connect to the right and left sides. The right angles of the triangles end slightly above the rectangle. The details include two strips that extend horizontally from the top of the rectangle to the ends of the triangle. On the top of the large rectangle are four small, separated, equidistant rectangles that are as tall as the distance from the top of the large rectangle to the top of the triangles. The middle two rectangles extend below the top of the large rectangle and then angle to the sides so that the parallel lines do the following: one line connects to the tip of the triangle that touches the large rectangle and one line ends just above.

Brooch, 1998
sawn and mounted silver.
The Susan Grant Lewin Collection, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
2016-34-14

Its dimensions are

H x W x D: 8 x 9.8 x 0.7 cm (3 1/8 x 3 7/8 x 1/4 in.)

Cite this object as

Dancer Brooch Brooch; Designed by Ed Wiener (American, 1918 - 1991); USA; silver; H x W x D: 8 x 9.8 x 0.7 cm (3 1/8 x 3 7/8 x 1/4 in.); Gift of Michele Wiener; 1991-169-1

Short URL http://cprhw.tt/o/2DvRc/
Accession Number 1991-169-1
Object ID 18636049