DC's National Building Museum Celebrates Hildreth Meière's Art Deco murals and mosaics

EXAMINER - DC
March 23, 2011

WASHINGTON DC - Think Art Deco, what doesn’t come to mind is who created its major murals -- and much of America’s greatest Art Deco murals, mosaics, and decorative arts -- Hildreth Meière. Washington’s National Building Museum is correcting this with a just-opened, much-deserved tribute, “Walls Speak: The Narrative Art of Hildreth Meière”, the first major retrospective of the award-winning artist’s spectacular work. Her 100-plus commissions included designs for:

• :New York City: St. Bartholomew’s Church, its magnificent Magnificat stained glass window, among its other stained glass and mosaics; and Temple Emanu-El, eight-story high mosaics over the main sanctuary’s ark.
• Washington, DC: National Cathedral‘s mosaic apse in its Resurrection Chapel. 
• St. Louis, MO: Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, which has one of the world’s largest installations of mosaics.
• 70 portable altarpieces for World War II military chaplains – and she supervised creation of more than 500 of these triptychs.

Amid Meière's stupendous success, she did have one rejection. Her National Cathedral contract included another commission, for the crypt. They “wanted to go with a more abstract style, with the appearance of stained glass,” Broikos said. “They decided her studies were too literal, so she lost the commission – very unusual for her.” [link]