LANCASTER, PA.- The Demuth Museum announces its exhibition, Robert E. Locher: A Modern Classic, on view from July 15 through September 8, 2017.This exhibition features work by artist, theater designer, interior designer, and longtime friend of Charles Demuth, Robert E. Locher.
Born in 1888 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Locher spent the majority of his career traveling between cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Paris, and his hometown. Upon moving to New York City he started gaining a reputation for his theater and costume designs as well as illustrations in major publications including Vogue, Vanity Fair, Town & Country and House & Garden. He was hired by Baron Adolph de Meyer, Vogue’s first staff photographer, to work at his interior design firm and Locher quickly became one of the leading modern designers of the 20th century. Prolific during his time and well respected by his contemporaries, some of Locher’s clients included Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Mrs. Benjamin Rogers and Juliana Force. The aforementioned apartments and townhomes in New York City, the new Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Hotel Nacionale in Havana, Cuba are examples of some of his largest interior commissions. Locher was also a professor and a special critic at the Parsons School of Design in New York, specializing in advertising and costume design.
Locher who, from an early age, was a close friend of artist Charles Demuth inherited his estate in 1943, This included 120 E. King Street and the surrounding buildings as well as his unsold watercolors. Locher quickly closed his studio in New York, and moved to Lancaster with his partner Richard Weyand. They lived and worked in the buildings that now house the Demuth Museum until his death in 1956. Robert E. Locher: A Modern Classic features furniture, housewares, costume designs, and other work by this all but forgotten artist who mastered fusing traditional design elements with modern aesthetic that was praised around the world.
Accompanying this exhibition is a major catalogue, Robert E. Locher: A Modern Classic by Anne M. Lampe with author Charlie Schroeder published by the Demuth Museum.
