A Home for all the Arts

Posted on May 6, 2014 by Experiment Station

Caption: Duncan Phillips’s journal from between 1917 and c. 1920, on view in the Reading Room through February 2015. Photo: Vivian Djen

Duncan Phillips was a prolific writer. Starting in his days as a student at Yale, Phillips wrote about art and literature, recounted trips abroad, and recorded his dreams for his museum. Meticulously cared for in the Phillips archives, the texts from the 1900s to 1930s show the development of his collecting vision and his passion for art.

Phillips’s journals from 1917 to 1920 anticipate the museum’s opening in 1921:

We dream that the Phillips Memorial Gallery shall be a home for all the arts. We propose that the building shall be of a domestic rather than a formal and institutional type of architecture; that the grounds surrounding the building shall be laid out with terraces and gardens in keeping with the architectural style formally selected, that there shall be, as part of the scheme an Auditorium for lectures, plays and concerts; that there shall be a comprehensive art library; and a gallery for exhibitions of contemporary painting, foreigners as well as American. We propose to especially dedicate ourselves however to the encouragement of American art. We have in mind a plan for exhibiting the permanent collection in units with rooms containing the most important works obtainable by selected artists, rooms that will serve as memorials to the genius of these artists and to which their admirers will make [pilgrimages].

American Craft: Spotlight on Margo Petitti

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Experiment Station

(Left) Photo: Rhiannon Newman (Middle) Margo Petitti. Image courtesy of the artist (Right) Image courtesy of the artist

In conjunction with Made in the USA, we’re celebrating contemporary American ingenuity by highlighting some of our favorite American artisans featured in the museum shop. Today we interview Margo Petitti. Based in Fall River, Massachusetts, she designs and creates scarves and pocket squares.

How do you mix patterns in your scarves and pocket squares?

Margo Petitti: I of course take color and pattern into account when selecting fabric combinations, but also texture, weight, and fiber content. It’s important to keep like-weights and similar fibers together. When I design, sometimes I like to make something so bright and high contrast just to see it, and other times I keep the combinations more monochromatic or tonal and focus more on texture and finish.

What inspired you to make scarves and pocket squares?

MP: I was in graduate school when I started, and was introduced to a friend that has a men’s shop in Providence. He taught me about the suiting fabrics that he carried and gave me a swatch book of jacketing fabrics that he was discontinuing. I cut out the swatches and made a patchwork scarf for my dad for Christmas. I decided to withdraw from the graduate program over winter break and launched the company three months later. I started with scarves, and the pocket squares were a natural progression.

How does fashion inspire and inform your work?

MP: I’m actually much more inspired by the textiles themselves than with fashion. It’s difficult to not be inspired when working with such beautiful fabrics and classic patterns.

Do you have a favorite American artist? If yes, who, and why?

MP: I have always admired American fashion designers like, Marc Jacobs, Tom Ford, and Ralph Lauren for their timeless looks. One painter that I’ve always liked is Thomas Mcknight. My parents have a few of his prints and when I was little I always loved them because of their color. They have one with a skinny moon that I particularly like.

See Margo in action in this visit to her office:

Director’s Desk: A Closer Look at Made in the USA

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Experiment Station

Did you know that the Founder Duncan Phillips and his wife Marjorie had a painting studio in the upstairs of their house? Director Dorothy Kosinski explains how Phillips’s lifestyle and exceptional support of contemporaries like Arthur Dove, Ernest Lawson, and Rockwell Kent “shows the intensity of that relationship with the artist, the living artist, the practitioner. That’s obviously what made Duncan Phillips the happiest, the most engaged.”