Useful and Beautiful: Modernism, Dorothy Liebes and the Decorative Arts at the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition

In the summer of 1938, Dorothy Wright Liebes embarked on a six-week, nine-country journey across Europe in preparation for her role as Director of the Decorative Arts Pavilion at the Golden Gate International Exposition the following year. Her mission was to gather items that illustrated her conviction that “the art spirit of any age may well be measured by the vitality in the design of everyday things.” She traversed the United States and Europe, collecting textiles, books, metalworks, sculpture, jewelry, furniture, and more, with a single unifying characteristic: modernism. The design of the pavilions, the exhibit catalog, the live demonstrations of artists in action, and the emphasis on indoor/outdoor living were Liebes’s vision realized. She was lauded by critics including Alfred Auerbach, who wrote, “The entire presentation reveals a discerning, keen understanding of who’s who and what’s what in modern art at the moment.”

Liebes biographer, Liz Schott, is a retired educator who lives in Sebastopol, California. Her proposal for Useful and Beautiful: The Life of Dorothy Wright Liebes won the prestigious Biographers International Organization’s Hazel Rowley Prize, which honors first-time biographers, in June, 2025.