The Story of Majolica Mania | The Walters Art Museum | March 13–August 7, 2022

The Walters Art Museum transports visitors back to the Victorian era with Majolica Mania, an exhibition that highlights the beauty and inventiveness of a once wildly popular ceramic.

Taking over the entirety of 1 West Mount Vernon Place, also known as Hackerman House, Majolica Mania features immersive installations on each floor, including a recreation of a Victorian parlor complete with faux plants and foods. This exhibition restores majolica, which fell out of favor in the early to mid-20th century, to the history of design.

Featuring 350 works that highlight the vibrant color of the ceramic’s lead-based glazes and stunning inventiveness, Majolica Mania explores themes including the natural world, foods and fashions, class, labor, immigration, and the human cost of majolica’s production. Majolica gets its name from the tin-glazed maiolica of the Italian Renaissance and was an answer to the question of what good design should look like in an age of industrial manufacturing.

Majolica was introduced at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and quickly became ubiquitous in Victorian England and America, with works appearing in museum displays and royal palaces as well as in the homes of average citizens. As majolica retailed at a cheaper price than porcelain, it was available to all classes of society and, in Victorian homes, was commonly found in the conservatory or dining room, in the form of tureens and servers, jardinières, teapots, garden seats, plates, and decorative statues.

Majolica Mania is curated by Dr. Jo Briggs, Jennie Walters Delano Curator of 18th- and 19th-Century Art at the Walters Art Museum, and Susan Weber, Founder and Director of Bard Graduate Center.

Organized by the Walters Art Museum and Bard Graduate Center, New York.

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