Walls Speak: the Narrative Art of Hildreth Meiere

This book has been published in connection with the exhibition, The Walls Speak: The Narrative Art of Hildreth Meiere. Joseph A. LoSchiavo, Associate Vice-President, St. Bonaventure University and Executive Director, The Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts, provides a preface for the book; it was at the Quick Center for the Arts that the exhibition opened before moving to the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, in the spring of 2011. Louise Meiere Dunn, Hildreth's granddaughter, provides a recap of Hildreth Meiere's commissions. In her lifetime (1892 1961), Hildreth Meiere was considered the most famous, distinguished, and prolific Art Deco muralist in the country. She was also one of America's leading practitioners of the art of mosaic and one of America's most gifted embellishers of architectural environments. She is an important figure in the history of American liturgical art and one of its most ecumenical practitioners. The challenge in presenting the work of Hildreth Meiere has been in making her mosaics, murals, ceramic tile decoration, stained glass, and exterior metal and enamel sculptures come alive for the visitor. We do this through preparatory sketches, painted cartoons, models, large mosaic samples, and painted altarpieces," said Catherine C. Brawer, the curator of Walls Speak: The Narrative Art of Hildreth Meiere, who assembled the exhibition's materials which represent 25 of Ms. Meiere's most important commissions.