Josef Hoffmann: Interiors 1902-1913

In November of 2006, the Neue Galerie New York opened an extraordinary exhibition of the interiors of the Austrian designer and cofounder of the Vienna Secession, Josef Hoffman. With incredible care and attention, Neue Galerie curator Christian Witt-Dorring reconstructed four entire rooms by Hoffmann: a girl's bedroom from the Max Biach apartment (Vienna, 1902), a bedroom from the Hans Salzer apartment (Vienna, 1902), the dining room from the apartment of Jerome Stonborough and Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein (Berlin, 1905); and the dining room from the apartment of the Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler (Geneva, 1913). Naturally, critics lavished their praises on this exemplary labor of love. The Making of an Exhibition serves as a companion volume to the catalogue for that exhibit (Josef Hoffman: Interiors 1902-1913), documenting the painstaking process of assembling materials for these interiors, and their final installation. In the process of relating this tale, Witt-Dorring shows us how a curator tackles the challenge of bringing such work to life. The result is a publication that displays the work of Josef Hoffmann as it was meant to be seen--in color, and as a series of fully realized ensembles.