Entrance to the National Gallery of Art exhibition Art Nouveau, 1890-1914

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Hello, I'm Earl Powell, Director of the National Gallery of Art, and I'm delighted to welcome you to this extraordinary exhibition, Art Nouveau, 1890-1914.

As the largest group of Art Nouveau objects ever assembled, this show provides a comprehensive view of the movement that swept Europe and the United States at the turn of the last century. A period of significant change, it resembles in many ways our own time. Indeed, we can see in Art Nouveau the seeds of modernity and our own fast-paced world.

It was an age of innovation, introducing modern conveniences such as the car and the telephone, electricity, the department store, and the skyscraper. Cities were mushrooming, nationalism was on the rise, religion was being questioned, and the role of women was shifting. Art Nouveau--the new art--reflected these transformations in a dynamic, linear style that emphasized individuality through a decorative vocabulary based on nature.

Beginning in the 1890s, artists reached out to a vast number of design sources for inspiration, exploring the cultural roots of their own countries as well as art from Asia and the Middle East. At the same time, they experimented with new materials and techniques across a broad range of media to create a unified vision of design and architecture.