Jewish Women's Role in Modernist Design Highlighted at Jewish Museum

The Jewish Museum in New York presents "Modernity and Opulence: Women of the Wiener Werkstätte," a survey exhibition running through November 15, 2026, that examines the overlooked contributions of Jewish women to early 20th-century Viennese modernism. The show features over 200 objects by 30 Jewish women artists, including Vally Wieselthier and Felice Rix-Ueno, spanning fashion, ceramics, graphic design, and decorative arts. Recent scholarship indicates roughly a quarter of the nearly 200 women working for the Wiener Werkstätte (1903–1932) were of Jewish descent. The exhibition is organized in cooperation with the MAK—Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna. Curator Kristina Parsons noted that the Werkstätte's legacy has often neglected gender and craft, while director James S. Snyder emphasized the museum's commitment to foregrounding Jewish artistic traditions. Other featured artists include Lotte Calm and Mizi Friedmann-Otten, who, along with Wieselthier and Rix-Ueno, participated in the 1925 Paris International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts.