Artist Lillian Schwartz produced cutting-edge films, videos and multimedia works, including the print Boulez Conducting / THF188554

Member Preview: March 24, 2023
Open to Public: March 25-Jan. 1, 2024

Spring 2023 marks the debut of a new collections gallery in Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation. You can find it behind the Heroes of the Sky exhibit and by the new permanent exhibit, Miniature Moments: A Journey Through Hallmark® Keepsake Ornaments (see story on Page 64). The Henry Ford’s Lillian Schwartz collection is the first to be exhibited in the new space, which is set to host temporary exhibitions of significant collections going forward.

A donation from the Schwartz family in 2020, the material acquired from multimedia artist Lillian Schwartz’s body of work includes thousands of objects, from films and videos to 2D artwork, sculptures, personal papers, computer hardware and film editing equipment.

The approximately 1,800-square-foot gallery will be split into three sections for the Schwartz exhibition, expounding on three core themes, from the artist’s transition from childhood to adulthood, her introduction to the Bell Laboratories in the late ‘60s through early ‘70s and her penchant for pushing the media she worked with to its limits. Expect to see a newly restored kinetic sculpture, Proxima Centauri, that has not been on exhibit in a museum in decades, along with rarely shown mixed-media works, Schwartz’s early films and a humorous series about early internet web searches, among many other artifacts.

This post was adapted from an article in the Winter-Spring 2023 issue of The Henry Ford Magazine. More about The Henry Ford’s acquisition of works from groundbreaking multimedia artist Lillian Schwartz in the January-May 2022 issue of The Henry Ford Magazine.