Over 40 years at the forefront of 20th century design and decorative arts
Mark McDonald, mid-century design trailblazer
Mark McDonald’s career in the decorative arts began in Dallas, Texas in 1973 after graduation from Southern Methodist University. He worked part-time for Lloyd & Parton, a celebrated antique store, and Delahunty, a contemporary art gallery. In 1974 he opened a delivery and shipping business, McDonald Delivery, for Texas galleries, museums, and antique stores. He studied fine art handling and crate building with the head conservator at the Kimbal Art Museum in Ft. Worth, Texas.
In 1975 Mark moved to New York City and began an important three year apprenticeship with Lillian Nassau, the reigning queen of Art Nouveau and Tiffany in her renowned East 57th Street gallery. This great learning opportunity was followed by the opening of Mark McDonald Ltd in 1981 with his partner Ralph Cutler. The small shop was located at 799 Broadway between 10th and 11th streets, dedicated to buying and selling American and European architectural furniture from the 1920’s -1960’s. They specialized in furniture by the designers Aalto, Eames, Breuer, George Nelson, Isamu Noguchi, Gilbert Rohde, and Paul Frankl, and others.
Over 40 years at the forefront of 20th century design & decorative arts
Mark McDonald, mid-century design trailblazer
Mark McDonald’s career in the decorative arts began in Dallas, Texas in 1973 after graduation from Southern Methodist University. He worked part-time for Lloyd & Parton, a celebrated antique store, and Delahunty, a contemporary art gallery. In 1974 he opened a delivery and shipping business, McDonald Delivery, for Texas galleries, museums, and antique stores. He studied fine art handling and crate building with the head conservator at the Kimbal Art Museum in Ft. Worth, Texas.
In 1975 Mark moved to New York City and began an important three year apprenticeship with Lillian Nassau, the reigning queen of Art Nouveau and Tiffany in her renowned East 57th Street gallery. This great learning opportunity was followed by the opening of Mark McDonald Ltd in 1981 with his partner Ralph Cutler. The small shop was located at 799 Broadway between 10th and 11th streets, dedicated to buying and selling American and European architectural furniture from the 1920’s -1960’s. They specialized in furniture by the designers Aalto, Eames, Breuer, George Nelson, Isamu Noguchi, Gilbert Rohde, and Paul Frankl, and others.
“
This walking, talking 20th-century-design database ... has sold some of the most exalted pieces of midcentury modern design ever to come up for private sale.”
—The New York Times
“This walking, talking 20th-century-design database ... has sold some of the most exalted pieces of mid-century modern design ever to come up for private sale.”
—The New York Times
NYC design gallery pioneer
In 1983. Mark and his partner Ralph Cutler opened Fifty/50 with Mark Isaacson. Over the next ten years the partners pioneered the researching, exhibiting, and marketing of what has become known as Mid-Century Modern. Exhibitions such as Charles and Ray Eames: The Sum of the Parts; Structure and Ornament: American Modernist Jewelry 1940-1960; Fused Glass: The Artisanry of Frances and Michael Higgins; and Venini and the Murano Renaissance: Italian Glass of the 1940’s and 50’s (with accompanying catalogues) solidified their credentials. Other exhibitions mounted at Fifty/50 between 1985 and 1992 explored the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, Donald Deskey, Ed Weiner, and American studio ceramicists.
Through their endeavors they were credited with placing postwar design securely in the modernist lexicon and raising appreciation from the level of kitsch and nostalgia to serious scholarship. In the late summer of 1993, after losing partners Ralph and Mark to AIDS, McDonald closed the doors of Fifty/50.
After two years of private dealing, Mark opened the Gansevoort Gallery in October of 1995 in the then unfashionable Meat Packing district. He continued the Fifty/50 tradition of collecting, exhibiting and selling the best examples of the mid-century period. Mark mounted two major exhibitions at Gansevoort Gallery: Intimate Sculpture: Art Smith and His Contemporaries and The Nordic Modern Movement: Masterworks in Glass, Ceramics, Silver, and Wood (with accompanying catalogue). During those Gansevoort years he expanded his range of interest by reaching into the later decades of the 20th century, incorporating designs by the groups Memphis and Droog, and artist/craftsmen Ron Arad, Sam Maloof, George Nakashima, and Marc Newsom into his inventory. In celebration of the installation of the gallery’s eye-catching street-level door/gate by his friend and neighbor, the architect Ali Tayar, Mark mounted his first show of cutting edge contemporary design, featuring Ali’s furniture designs. He closed the gallery in the summer of 2002 with a tribute to his clients, the exhibition Highlights: 20 Years of Collecting Modern.
“Mr. Modernism” moves upstate
Leaving NYC in 2003, Mark embarked on a new venture in upstate New York, where he bought and renovated a three story c. 1910 department store on Hudson’s historic Warren Street. The store at 555 Warren Street, eponymously named, featured a mix of excellent spaces for retail, exhibition, library display, office, and storage. In this grand setting, he continued to offer excellent examples of vintage Mid-Century decorative arts and furniture, books on design and architecture, as well as an extraordinary selection of jewelry by artists from the American Studio Jewelry Movement. The second floor gallery was home to exhibitions of photography, ceramics, and furniture designs by internationally known local artists Lynn Davis, Peter Superti, Mary Ann Davis, Shelia Metzner, and Peter Aaron. Mark collaborated with guest curator Kico Govantes to organize an exhibition AB/EX East/West, focused on abstract paintings from 1950–1970 by artists from New York and California.
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Mark McDonald didn’t invent Mid-Century Modern, of course, but he is credited for putting it on the furnishing and decorating map. He is known as Mr. Modernism.”
—Old House Journal
“Mark McDonald didn’t invent Mid-Century Modern, of course, but he is credited for putting it on the furnishing and decorating map. He is known as Mr. Modernism.”
—Old House Journal
Museum collaborations
The Fifty/50 collection of mid-century studio jewelry was purchased by the Montreal Museum of Decorative Arts in 1993, who mounted a traveling exhibition and published the ground-breaking book on the movement, Messengers of Modernism. Mark’s interest in the jewelers of the studio jewelry movement led to his involvement with the estates of Art Smith and Claire Falkenstein, and the families of Margaret DePatta, Ed Wiener, and Sam Kramer. His relationship with the Art Smith estate facilitated a major donation of masterworks from the artist’s Greenwich village store to the Brooklyn Museum in 2008. This donation was celebrated by the Brooklyn Museum with a solo exhibition, From the Village to Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith. Mark worked with the curators at the National Museum of African American History and Culture to arrange purchases, gifts, and loans to establish Art Smith’s place as the only jeweler with a permanent display in that important institution. Mark continues to represent the estate of Art Smith to this day, handling authentications and appraisals.
Beyond gallery walls
For 26 years spanning the Fifty/50, Gansevoort, and Hudson eras, McDonald’s booth, always at the entrance to the influential NY Modernism Fair, was a gathering place for collectors, curators, decorators, and friends of the decorative arts. He was a fixture for decades at both the LA Modernism Fair and Palm Springs Modernism from the 1980’s to 2010. After NY Modernism was re-booted, he continued this tradition with participation in the Salon Fairs also in the Armory. He was invited to exhibit at Design/Miami in 2011, the important design fair held in Miami during the Art/Basel/Miami Beach fair.
In 2003 Mark, in association with client/collector Phil Aarons and noted expert/author Martin Edelberg, published The Ceramic Forms of Leza McVey, a monograph on the work of a forgotten mid-century ceramist. This publication was as a celebration of a treasured relationship Mark had developed with Leza and her husband Bill McVey, Cranbrook alumni and Cleveland residents, after discovering her work and visiting their home/studios.
In April 2012 Mark was awarded the honorary Iris Foundation Award by the Bard Graduate Center, one of only a handful of “dealers” singled out for career-long contributions to the advancement of the decorative arts. He has written many articles for various Mid-Century publications, most recently Modernism and Modern Magazine, and has served on panel discussions on topics relating to the field at the NY School of Interior Design. He is frequently cited as an expert in national publications and has provided research material, comments, and photographic information for numerous books on the subject of design of the 20th century. Articles about Mark and his many contributions to Modernism have appeared in The New York Times, Elle Decor, House Beautiful, House and Garden, The Village Voice, and Brutus, to name a few.
More recently Mark was asked by the Friedman Benda gallery to create an exhibition for their annual guest curator series Inside the Walls, Architects Design in January/February 2018. McDonald also worked with Rago/Wright to create the 1st auction of its kind, an exhibition and sale of studio jewelry. Structure and Ornament, Studio Jewelry, 1900 to the Present, February 11th, 2020 featured a large selection on mid-century pieces as well a cross-section of excellent examples of hand-made jewelry by well-known artists/designers from Art Nouveau to cutting edge contemporary.
During the last 30 years Mark has provided appraisal services for many leading collectors and museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Brooklyn Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, NY, The Musee des Arts Decoratifs de Montreal, The Victoria and Albert Museum, and The Vitra Museum of Design.
PRESS INCLUDES:
New frontiers
“Over the years, I have renovated, restored, and poured my energy and heart into existing buildings, creating spaces where I have enjoyed living and working; one NYC loft, 3 galleries in NYC, 2 galleries in Hudson, 2 urban apartments, and 2 upstate homes. The sale of our Warren Street gallery building in 2021 afforded me the opportunity to fulfill a life-long dream: to work with an architect to build a live/work space for my specific needs.
“I have been following the work of the architect Steven Holl for many years. Despite initial apprehension at asking someone so well-known, I was surprised and honored when Steven enthusiastically agreed to work with me to design a small 1500 sq. ft. live/work space.
“In 2019 Steven built a 2,000 sq. ft. structure on his property outside of Rhinebeck using corrugated aluminum on the exterior, concrete floors, and plywood interior walls. He calls it the “Architectural Archive and Research Library”, a space he uses as an upstate office, library, and a home for hundreds of architectural models representing 40 years of his practice. The “Archive” building serves as an inspiration/model for our project, “Hudson L-House”, to be erected on a vacant lot we own on Union Street in Hudson. We broke ground on September 1st, 2022 and hope to complete the project by the winter of 2023-2024. See Steven Holl’s website for a description of our project.”
–Mark McDonald
