Designing Home: Jews and Midcentury Modernism

This presentation explores the now-ubiquitous midcentury-modern style in order to consider it anew, through the lens of Jewish American adaptation and assimilation. It highlights the contributions of well-known figures such as Anni Albers and Richard Neutra alongside those of lesser-known or critically overlooked artists, including Ruth Adler Schnee and Marguerite Wildenhain. Designing Home also identifies the significant Jewish patrons, critics, and merchants who helped midcentury-modern design reach a popular audience. Underscoring the fact that these figures were not working in isolation, Designing Home focuses on six hubs across the United States that were critical in the broad dissemination of modernist design principles between the 1930s and the 1950s: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Black Mountain College, Black Mountain, North Carolina; the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Arts and Architecture magazine, Los Angeles; and Pond Farm, Guerneville, California.

This presentation is the keynote lecture that launches Providence Preservation Society's week-long Festival of Modernism (Octover 5 - 11, 2025). Please see the Festival website for more information about all programs. A reception will follow the presentation. The location for this event is Temple Beth-El, designed by Ibram Lassaw, Ina Golub, and Percival Goodman in 1954.

Mr. Donald Albrecht has curated exhibitions that have ranged from overviews of cultural trends, including World War II and the American Dream and Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture and Design for the National Building Museum, the National Design Triennial for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and Gay Gotham: Art and Underground Culture in New York for the Museum of the City of New York, to profiles of individual design firms and artists — The Work of Charles and Ray Eames for the Library of Congress and Vitra Design Museum, Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future for the Finnish Cultural Institute, the Museum of Finnish Architecture, and the National Building Museum, and The High Style of Dorothy Draper for the Museum of the City of New York.

For most exhibitions, Mr. Albrecht also develops and edits the catalogs, contributing major essays and working with other writers to provide fresh critical perspectives. His catalogs have garnered numerous awards, including the Society of Architectural Historians’ Best Exhibition Catalogue for the Eero Saarinen and the Eames catalogs.

Mr. Albrecht has also contributed essays to a number of books about architecture and design, including The Glass House: Pairings and California Design: The Legacy of West Coast Craft and Style to monographs on Andree Putman, Michael Gabellini, and 1100 Architect, and has written extensively about the relationship between architecture and film, starting with his seminal book, Designing Dreams: Modern Architecture in the Movies. Mr. Albrecht lectures frequently about architecture and design. He is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.

Moderator: Eric Anderson studies and teaches the history of modern design. His interests include interiors and domesticity, design exhibitions and media, psychological theories in design, and the global history of modernism. Publications have appeared in the journals West 86th, Centropa, Journal of Design History, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, Austrian History Yearbook, German History, and Burlington Magazine, and in books including On Edge: Interior Provocations, Design Dialogue: Jews, Culture and Viennese Modernism, Making Home: The Arts and Crafts Movement and the Reform of Everyday Life, Klimt und der Ringstrasse, and Performance, Fashion, and the Modern Interior. As Fulbright-Freud Visiting Lecturer of Psychoanalysis in Vienna he conducted research on a book manuscript, recently completed, titled The Chromatic Unconscious: Sigmund Freud and the Experience of Design in Vienna’s Age of Color. His current book project, Ulm in the World, looks at the politics and pedagogy of Third World development at the Ulm School of Design in 1960s West Germany.

Early Bird tickets to the keynote lecture and reception: $25 Students / $45 PPS Members / $55 General through September 20. Ticket Price after September 20: $30 students / $50 PPS Members / $60 General.

The Festival of Modern Design benefits PPS’s year-round efforts to document, interpret, preserve and advocate for Providence’s architectural landmarks and beloved places. Thank you for being part of the work we do.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Temple Beth El Providence, 70 Orchard Avenue, Providence, United States