The Wisteria Dining Room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2008

The Wisteria Dining Room in New Galleries for 19th- and Early 20th-Century European Paintings and Sculpture
Opening December 4 in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
A complete and fully furnished Art Nouveau dining room designed by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer shortly before World War I – The Wisteria Dining Room – has been installed within The Metropolitan Museum of Art's renovated and expanded New Galleries for 19th- and Early 20th-Century European Paintings and Sculpture, opening to the public on December 4, 2007. The room – which has been in storage for the past 40 years because of lack of space in which to exhibit it prior to the expansion of the galleries – is the only complete French Art Nouveau interior on display in an American museum.

The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation has made possible the reinstallation of The Wisteria Dining Room. The dining room comes from the house in Paris at 10 bis Avenue Élysée-Reclus (at the foot of the Eiffel Tower) designed by the architect Lucien Hesse and built for Auguste Rateau (1863-1930), an engineer who manufactured turbines and internal combustion engines and was a member of the Académie des Sciences as well as an art connoisseur with a particular interest in the Art Nouveau movement. The room and all of its contents were conceived as a unified whole and were created in 1910-14 under the artistic supervision of Rateau's friend Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer (1865-1953), who was also responsible for a number of other rooms in the apartment, including two salons, a library, and a study (appropriately decorated with a frieze of stylized turbines and engine parts).

In 1950, the apartment was rented on an 18-year lease to René de Montaigu, with the stipulation that he purchase the Art Nouveau woodwork and furnishings. The dining room remained intact in Paris until 1966, when it was purchased – in its entirety – by The Metropolitan Museum of Art from Monsieur de Montaigu. Elements from other rooms of the apartment were later sold at public auction in Paris.

Despite early work as a lithographer, between 1887 and 1895 Lévy-Dhurmer served as artistic director at the ceramics factory of the well-known Clément Massier in Golfe-Juan, where he became known for his experimentations with metallic luster glazes based on Middle Eastern and Hispano-Moresque pottery. Around 1895 he turned his hand to painting instead, establishing his professional reputation in an 1896 exhibition at the Georges Petit gallery in Paris; he later became a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Around 1910 he began to explore the related process of interior decorating, leading to this commission.

Like many of his contemporaries (such as Josef Hoffmann in Austria, Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Scotland, Frank Lloyd Wright in America, Victor Horta in Belgium, and Hector Guimard in France), Lévy-Dhurmer worked as an ensemblier, conceiving interiors as "total works of art" by designing not only the architectural setting but also everything – down to the door handles and drawer pulls – that went into them, so that no single element would offend the eye as inconsistent with the whole. One major difference, however, was Lévy-Dhurmer's approach as an artist rather than as an architect.

The wisteria motif, selected by Madame Rateau, may represent "welcome," a theme appropriate for a dining room. Lévy-Dhurmer incorporated the motif throughout the room: the canvases, painted in the pointillist style, depict herons and peacocks standing in wisteria-laden landscapes; the book-matched walnut-veneered wall panels are inlaid with purplish amaranth representing clusters of wisteria blossoms; further clusters of blossoms and leaves may be found on the furniture and stamped on the leather upholstery. The motif even appears in such details as the door handles, drawer pulls, and the gilded details of the fire screen. The bronze-and-alabaster standing lamps evoke the twisting trunks of wisteria vines.

Lévy-Dhurmer entrusted the execution of his designs to a number of makers: the woodwork and furniture are by Édouard-Lo