The Cleveland Museum of Art (spacer)
Special Exhibitions
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Viktor Schreckengost
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What is in the exhibition?
Viktor's success in industrial design is primarily based on his great artistic and mechanical skill, but it also was pushed forward by his wonderful ability to work with people and explain his ideas. -- Curator Henry Adams

It is estimated that every adult alive in the United States today has handled objects designed by Viktor Schreckengost or one of his students.

This is The Cleveland Museum of Art's exclusive, first full-scale overview of Viktor Schreckengost's career, spanning more than 85 years, as an artist and pioneer industrial designer. Curator Henry Adams has chosen more than 150 works for this exhibition.

Viktor Schreckengost was skilled in working with all types of materials. Come see and enjoy figures, animals, and abstract subjects in a variety of materials from clay and plaster casts to carved vessel forms and hand-painted ceramics. Explore Schreckengost's career in industrial design through drawings, photographs, and objects such as dinnerware, bicycles, and pedal cars. Visitors will be surprised and delighted by the number of objects familiar to those growing up in the second half of the twentieth century.

Viktor Schreckengost and 20th-Century Design is organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art. The exhibition is made possible by Hahn Loeser & Parks, LLP and the John P. Murphy Foundation, with additional support from the Richard Florsheim Art Fund, Northern Trust Company, Nottingham-Spirk Design Associates, Betty and Joe Oros, Mr. And Mrs. Viktor Schreckengost, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Promotional support for the exhibition is provided by Avenues Magazine and Majic Oldies 105.7.

Highlights of the exhibition include:

The Jazz Bowl (about 1931) designed for Eleanor Roosevelt.


American Limoges Manhattan Shape Dinnerware (1935), the first modern mass-produced American dinnerware.


Pursuit Plane (1941). This child's pedal car had a propeller that turned as it moved forward. Schreckengost carried out extensive measurements and ergonomic studies to make sure the plane fit the proportions of a child.


Sears Spaceliner Bicycle , first issued 1965. The first bicycle with a "supersonic look." The design for this bicycle included many technological innovations, including a frame welded at one moment in a hydrogen reduction chamber and a thinner tire that set a new standard for the American bicycle industry.


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