The Scandinavian Home

Featuring stunning landscapes, portraits, furniture, and decorative arts, this exhibition comprises more than 100 works from the private collection of Pennsylvania-based art collectors David and Susan Werner. The Werners’ collection includes furniture, ceramics, glass, painting, textiles, sculpture, graphics, and metalwork from eighteenth through the mid-twentieth century Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland.

Exhibitions of Scandinavian art typically focus on either painting — often on the work of a single artist or theme such as landscape — or on artisanal design. The Scandinavian Home integrates folk, decorative, and fine art with “home” as a central metaphor, mirroring the tastes and convictions of the period’s collectors and creators.

In doing so, the exhibition examines the entangled notions of home and homeland central to the art and material culture of Nordic countries. The arts played a crucial role in reinforcing a shared sense of belonging as Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden strove to identify and celebrate “authentic” local and national identities. The linkages among land, landscape, handicraft, and domestic dwellings as dimensions of “home” are embedded in the objects on display in the exhibition.

The exhibition was created by consulting curators Patricia G. Berman, Ph.D., and Michelle Facos, Ph.D., and organized by Dawn R. Brean, chief curator and director of collections at The Frick Pittsburgh.