Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art

The exhibition featured and referred to leading Modernists in European and American art and architecture with a connection to then-Miller Company lighting designs. Artworks exhibited included works by many artists including those by Josef Albers, Leo Amino, Jean Arp / Hans Arp, Harry Bertoia, Ilya Bolotowsky, Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, Mary Callery, Stuart Davis, Max Ernst, Lyonel Feininger, Perle Fine, Juan Gris, James Guy, Jean Hélion, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, Wassily Kandinsky, Kunisada, Paul Klee, Fernand Léger, Jacques Lipchitz, John Marin, Roberto Matta, Carlos Mérida, Joan Miro, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Ben Nicholson, Georgia O'Keeffe, I. Rice Pereira, Pablo Picasso, Jose de Rivera, Kurt Schwitters, Charles Sheeler, Rufino Tamayo, Mark Tobey, John Tunnard and Theo van Doesburg.[5]

Photographs of Modern architectural designs accompanied the artworks starting in c. December 1948 and included those by Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius (Bauhaus), Oscar Niemeyer, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Also, as part of the overall Painting toward architecture initiative, Oscar Niemeyer was commissioned to make a design, with Roberto Burle Marx for the unbuilt Tremaine House, a Modernist icon. At generally the same time, Frank Lloyd Wright made a design for a small complex at Meteor Crater, Arizona, on property that the Tremaines co-leased. This design was also unbuilt. In the exhibition, Roberto Burle-Marx's Design for a garden was exhibited.[1]

In parallel, a book also entitled Painting toward architecture was released in November 1948. The catalogue essay was written by Henry-Russell Hitchcock; Alfred H. Barr, Jr. of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, wrote the foreword. [6] Graphic designer Bradbury Thompson designed the catalogue.[4]

Through its run, the travelling exhibition received substantial national media coverage and deepened a discussion on Modern art and architecture in the United States.[4][5]

Apart from Painting toward architecture, there were other Miller Company art shows at Wesleyan University (1945), Cornell University (1951), Smith College (1951-52), and Trinity College in Hartford (1958). Throughout this time period, artworks were loaned to many other exhibitions at various museums.[5]

In February-April 1949, during the Painting toward architecture (1947-52) exhibition run, the Museum of Modern Art exhibited From Le Corbusier to Niemeyer: Savoye House - Tremaine House 1949. According to the museum, "The theme of this show is based on Henry Russell-Hitchcock’s book on the Miller [Company] Collection of abstract art, Painting toward architecture..." Exhibited with documentation showing Le Corbusier's iconic Villa Savoye was juxtaposed Oscar Niemeyer's maquette with an integrated Design for a garden gouache-work (1948) for the unbuilt Tremaine house.[7] In 2010, Berry Bergdoll, a curator at MoMA asserted the importance of the exhibition as fusing strands of the geometric and organic soon after WWII.[8]

During this time, as part of a wider Modernist agenda, Miller Co. activities included Philip Johnson closely consulting on product design for the company for at least a three-year period[9] Josef Albers, formerly at the internationally influential Bauhaus in Germany, was hired to work on the corporate logo; and Serge Chermayeff, president of the "New Bauhaus", the School of Design in Chicago, to contributed graphic design and interior design concepts utilizing Miller Co. lighting.[4][1]

By the mid-1950s, the growing art collection activity morphed away from the Miller Co. to the private Tremaine Collection and the Tremaine's art/design decision-making activities took place in Meriden; Madison, CT; New York City and beyond. In actuality, many artworks marketed as from the Miller Co. were privately owned by the Tremaines and lent for the corporate initiative.[4]

Over the years, the Tremaines collected hundreds of artworks and exhibition many in hundreds of national and international exhibitions.[10] Works purchased early on in artists' careers include Three Flags by Jasper Johns (1958), now at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Marilyn Diptych by Andy Warhol (1962), now at Tate Modern in London, and Roy Lichtenstein's I Can See the Whole Room...and There's Nobody in It!. In the late 1960s, the Tremaines offered land that they partly owned on their Arizona ranch to Walter de Maria to test his now-iconic The Lightning Field, a 1-mile x 1 km earthwork designed to attract lightning into an art performance with metal poles, before its relocation to New Mexico.[4]

In 1984, the Tremaine Collection was exhibited at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT. Over 150 art works were exhibited.[11]

"By the early 1980s the Tremaine collection had grown to more than 400 works by European and American artists", reported the New York Times,[12] and it was "considered by museum directors, dealers and art writers to be one of the greatest private collections of 20th century art in the world", reported the Hartford Courant.[13] The collection was estimated to be worth USD$84 million in 1987.[4] In 2015 dollars, this amount can be very roughly estimated at over USD$150 million.[14]

In 1988, many artworks in the Tremaine collection were sold at auction at Christie's in New York. The total amount of sold artworks was 25.8 million dollars. Jasper Johns' White flag sold for 7 million, the highest price paid for an artwork by a living artist at that time. [15] In 1991, 50 additional artworks were sold at Christie's New York.[16]

In 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama was photographed in front of one of the artworks formerly in the Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art, Victory Boogie Woogie by Piet Mondrian, at its current location in the Netherlands. The artwork is also on the cover of a biography on Emily Hall Tremaine. The painting was sold in 1998 for USD$40 million. [17][18]