Alphonse Mucha, Winter (detail), 1896, Color lithograph, 41 1/2 x 22 in., Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., Image courtesy of the Chrysler Museum of Art, Photograph by Edward Pollard, © Alphonse Mucha.
The Triumph of Nature: Art Nouveau from the Chrysler Museum of Art
Sustainers’ Preview
Wednesday, October 28 | 5-8 pm
Be among the first to see Art Nouveau treasures from the Chrysler Museum of Art! Sustainer members are invited to the exclusive preview event in celebration of OKCMOA’s fall exhibition, The Triumph of Nature.
5 pm | Reception in the Museum Lobby
6 pm | Lecture in the Noble Theater**
8 pm | Galleries close
RSVP today! Send an email to rsvp@okcmoa.com or call 405.278.8207.
**Theater seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
The Triumph of Nature: Art Nouveau from the Chrysler Museum of Art
October 31, 2026-January 24, 2027
The Triumph of Nature brings together Art Nouveau treasures from the rich holdings of the Chrysler Museum of Art, drawing primarily from the gifts of Walter P. and Jean Chrysler, whose homes were once the showrooms for these works. The exhibition will feature 127 works of art, including paintings, prints, jewelry, and furniture, and will be organized thematically into five sections:
- Japonisme
- Siegfried Bing and the Maison de l’Art Nouveau
- École de Nancy
- The Triumph of Nature
- From Nouveau to Deco: The Triumph of Industry
Works by some of the artists best associated with the Art Nouveau movement, such as Louis Comfort Tiffany, Gustav Klimt, Alphonse Mucha, and Aubrey Beardsley, will be featured in the exhibition.
ABOUT THE LECTURE
“Triumph of Beauty: Walter and Jean Chrysler’s Love of Art Nouveau”
The Chrysler Building in New York City is one of the most important pieces of architecture and Art Deco design. So why did the son and namesake of its builder, the car magnate Walter P. Chrysler Sr., fall in love with the more sensual, anti-industrial earlier style of Art Nouveau? This presentation will focus on the complicated relationships between father and son, and husband and wife, as Walter Jr. and his second wife, Jean, built one of the largest collections of Art Nouveau in the US. Their shared love of natural and sensual beauty guided their choices, but they were also driven by a focus on the art of glass and on their own private domestic life, where these pieces took center stage.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Lloyd DeWitt has been the Janet and Richard Geary Curator of European and American Art at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon since 2024. He has reinstalled the European and American galleries and also installed Monet to Matisse: French Moderns, Pissarro to Picasso: Masterworks on Loan from the Kirkland Family Collection, and Monet’s Floating Worlds at Giverny: Portland’s Waterlilies Resurfaces. He is currently working on German Expressionism in Art and Film and As Above, So Below: Alchemy in Art. At the Chrysler Museum, he served as Irene Leache Curator of European Art and Chief Curator and developed installations ranging from Thomas Jefferson, Architect: Palladian Models, Democratic Principles, and the Conflict of Ideals, and The Triumph of Nature: Art Nouveau from the Chrysler Museum of Art, as well as Farm to Table: Food, Art and Identity in the Age of Impressionism, which recently ended its four-venue tour at the Seattle Art Museum. As Curator of European Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, he organized exhibitions ranging from Michelangelo’s drawings and the paintings of Vilhelm Hammershoi to the late works of J.M.W. Turner. As Johnson Curator of Dutch and Flemish Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, he curated exhibitions on Jacob van Ruisdael, David Teniers II, Hieronymus Bosch, and Willem Kalf, as well as Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, which travelled to The Detroit Institute of Arts and the Musée du Louvre, Paris. His 2006 doctoral dissertation on Rembrandt’s early friend and rival Jan Lievens at the University of Maryland became a large monographic exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, and Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam. He earned his master’s degree at the University of Massachusetts and his undergraduate degree at the University of Guelph in Canada.
