Overview

ADA1900 works independently and in collaboration with museums to foster knowledge and appreciation of American decorative art (furniture, lighting, ceramics, metalwork and glass) from the period 1876-1940, with a focus on the American Arts & Crafts and Prairie School movements and American art pottery.  We support collection development at museums around the country through judicious loans and gifts of art, as well as strategic advisement on acquisitions.  We work closely with curators at more than twenty museums on scholarship, exhibitions, and object research, conservation and installation. 

Publication and Exhibition Projects

ADA1900 organizes and participates in publication and exhibition projects related to American decorative art from the period around 1900.  Our most important book and exhibition project thus far is The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs.  The book was published in association with Yale University Press.  The exhibition was co-organized with the Milwaukee Art Museum and Chipstone.  We have actively participated in other exhibition and book projects, including:

• Byrdcliffe: An American Arts and Crafts Colony, Herbert F. Johnson Museum
  
• Arts and Crafts in Europe and America, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• International Arts and Crafts, Victoria & Albert Museum
• A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls, New York Historical Society
• A New and Native Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene, The Gamble House
• Gustav Stickley, Dallas Museum of Art (forthcoming)
  

Collection Building

ADA1900 stewards one of the leading collections of American decorative art from the period around 1900.  We have donated important works of American decorative art to each of the following museums:

• Brooklyn Museum
  
• Carnegie Museum of Art
• Dallas Museum of Art
  
• Huntington Library, Art Collections & Botanical Gardens
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art
  
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Milwaukee Art Museum
• Minneapolis Institute of Arts
  
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
• The Newark Museum
• Saint Louis Art Museum
• Toledo Museum of Art
  

 ADA1900 is a non-profit foundation, qualified under Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3).

We are always researching American decorative art from the period 1876-1940, with a focus on the American Arts & Crafts and Prairie School movements and American art pottery.

We actively acquire museum-quality furniture, lighting, ceramics, metalwork and glass by American makers in our period of interest, with the goal of placing them within museum collections.