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Article: Biedermeier unbound: a traveling museum survey, currently on view in Milwaukee, highlights the courtly patronage and new bourgeois values behind the 19th century's "simple" but visually rich Biedermeier movement.
- Article from:
- Art in America
- Article date:
- December 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Brant Publications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In addition to its considerable beauty, the Milwaukee Art Museum's exhibition "Biedermeier: The Invention of Simplicity" [on view through Jan. 1] is notable for two major contributions to scholarship. In its catalogue, the art of the Biedermeier period, marked by similarities with Neo-Classicism and Romanticism as well as by differences, is defined with greater precision than has been customary in past literature. Moreover, the common notion is corrected that Biedermeier was primarily a product of middle-class values. Its patrons in many instances belonged to the courts and the aristocracy.
The Milwaukee show, the first major survey of Biedermeier art in North ...