Space-Light-Structure: The Jewelry of Margaret De Patta

February 4 – May 13, 2012

Presented in conjunction with the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Oakland Museum of California presents a retrospective exhibition on the work of pioneer jeweler Margaret De Patta. A seminal figure in the American Modernist Jewelry movement, De Patta was born in 1903 and moved to the Bay Area in 1923. Distinguished as one of the few American jewelers whose work and ideas were allied to the evolving ideas presented in the modern art movement, De Patta’s work was heavily influenced by the Constructivists and features architectural forms with simple lines, structure, and often movable parts.

Space-Light-Structure: The Jewelry of Margaret De Patta features more than 60 jewelry pieces as well as ceramics, flatware, photographs, pictograms, and newly released archival material. OMCA holds the largest collection of De Patta’s work, most of which was donated by her husband, Eugene Bielawski, after the artist’s untimely death in 1964.

Discover Margaret De Patta’s work online by exploring OMCA’s online collections.

Co-Organized by the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, and Oakland Museum of California.

Space-Light-Structure: The Jewelry of Margaret De Patta is made possible in part by support from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Rotasa Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Center for Craft, Creativity & Design at University of North Carolina, Asheville. The OMCA presentation is made possible by additional support from the Oakland Museum Women’s Board and the OMCA Art Guild.

The exhibition is curated by the OMCA Associate Curator of Craft and; Decorative Art Julie Muñiz, and MAD Curator of Jewelry Ursula Isle-Neuman.