Screen

This screen represents an important and infrequently collected area of work by architect Stanley Tigerman— furniture and interior design. Many of his residential projects completed in the 1980s and 1990s featured elaborate custom furnishings and built-ins, often featuring subversive references to classical architecture. This work was designed as part of a competition for the book publisher Rizzoli New York. Tigerman had a close and long standing relationship with the CEO, Gianfranco Monacelli, and the press published many of his books and journals over the years. This screen takes the overall form of a colonnade, with four connected pillars with stepped bases, capitals featuring semicircular brass bowls, and a bright pastel palette. Although unrealized, this element is one of the few furniture pieces by Tigerman in a museum collection, and an important aspect of his postmodern work.

Stanley Tigerman was a major figure in the Postmodernism movement from the
1970s–1990s, and remains one of the most provocative architects in Chicago. After founding his own practice in 1962, his early projects included designs for low-cost housing and experimental cities, and in the 1970s his work developed into a crusade against the dominance of post-Miesian corporate modernism in the United States. With built work and projects ranging from elaborate single families to sensitive designs for disadvantaged children and the homeless, Tigerman’s work is always framed and inspired by heady concepts including as irony, rupture, humor, and allusion. This interest led to his leadership in the seminal, yet never cohesive, group of architects known as the Chicago Seven. Since 1982, Tigerman has been in practice with his wife, Margaret McCurry, as Tigerman McCurry Architects. This acquisition joins a large collection of work by Tigerman McCurry at the museum, including an archive of material in the Ryerson and Burnham Library, and more than 30 original models.