Friends of Katherine Small Gallery (and people paying attention) will know that ours is not an art gallery. But sometimes we make exceptions. We were so taken by Emily Hass’s drawings of Berlin buildings where Jews and persecuted artists and intellectuals lived in the 1930s, that we asked if we could have a small show of them. And to make sure the work was in keeping with the overall goals of this place, we were sure to pick pieces that featured the homes of artist Otto Dix and designer Lilly Reich. Alas, there was no shortage of designers we could’ve chosen. . . .
Intended to explore parallels between forced migrations during WWII and current mass displacement in Syria and elsewhere, this work calls to mind so many things: Homes, how fortunate so many of us are, and how stunning a few lines and shapes can be when arranged with care.
Emily Hass was born down the street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and lives and works in New York City. In 2019 she was a Howard Foundation Fellow and has been awarded the McCloy Fellowship in Art and grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Hass is a MacDowell Fellow and has received residencies at La Maison Dora Maar and the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. Selections from her series Altonaer Straße were included in the 2011 Heimatkunde exhibition at the Jewish Museum Berlin and are now part of the museum’s permanent collection. Her work has been reviewed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and featured in The New York Times, Der Tagesspiegel, The Berlin Journal, Design Observer, Wallpaper, and on NPR’s Berlin Stories. Hass holds graduate degrees in psychology and design from Harvard University.