Radio City Music Hall is an Art Deco jewel. Its most notable—but somehow little-mentioned—features are the three metal and enamel roundels around the corner from the entrance on the 50th Street façade.
They were created by Hildreth Meière, a virtually forgotten artist and sculptor whose architectural mosaics, glass windows, and painted murals still adorn prominent churches, office buildings, skyscrapers, and world’s fair pavilions. A new book, The Art Deco Murals of Hildreth Meière by Catherine Coleman Brawer and Kathleen Murphy Skolnik with photographs by the artist’s granddaughter, Hildreth Meière Dunn, spotlights some of her astounding decorative works in danger of being orphaned, despite her renown when she was alive.
Even co-author Murphy Skolnik, an art historian at Roosevelt University in Chicago, says she had no idea who Hildreth Meière was until she heard the sculptor’s daughter, Louise Meière Dunn, speak at the Eighth World Congress on Art Deco in New York City in May 2005. “I was fascinated by her story and mesmerized by the images Louise showed,” she says....
[Article continues at https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/05/art-decos-nearly-forgotten-quietly-feminist-master/361495/]