History Bites | Brass History in the Making: Bridgeport Brass’s Artistic Patronage

In conjunction with the exhibition Bridgeport at Work, art historian & curator Kathleen Motes Bennewitz Bennewitz will discuss how the Bridgeport Brass Company, a national foundry established in 1865, followed the federal government’s model of civic artistic patronage to grow support for the looming world war. Beginning in 1941, newly appointed Bridgeport Brass president Hermann Steinkraus contracted a pool of four Westport artists, including Robert Lambdin, to join the company’s advertising department to promote Bridgeport Brass’s prowess. Steinkraus recognized his fellow Westporter’s reputations and skills as muralists and illustrators and, in the case of Lambdin for on-the-spot newspaper reportage; such talents contributed to the company’s larger publicity plan to have dynamic images depicting the entire Bridgeport Brass manufacturing process—from the drawing operation to the assembly line–displayed at company plants and board rooms, industry and civic expositions, and published in major business and industry magazines. Working from sketches on the foundry and shop floor, and likely also from photographs, these artists created a body of paintings and drawings heralding the “home front in action,” with plants at full operation around the clock to manufacture unprecedented amounts of brass—millions of pounds of brass rods, sheets, and tubes to produce ammunition and shell casings—for the Allied war effort. In peacetime, Lambin continued to work for the company and embraced the requirements of the modern client by creating advertising images and a pair of large-scale allegorical murals, titled “Brass Through the Ages,” to position Bridgeport Brass within the history of the age of copper, brass, and bronze and the “long march of civilization” from antiquity through the modern industrial era in America.

Free with Museum admission. Snacks and refreshments provided. Please feel free to bring your own lunch.

About the Speaker

Kathleen Motes Bennewitz is executive director of the Edward Hopper House Museum and Study Center in Nyack, NY, and also serves as Town of Westport Curator with the Westport Public Art Collections. After curatorial positions at the Amon Carter Museum and Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, and in education at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, she served as Director of Exhibitions and Programs at the Greenwich Historical Society (the historic site of the Cos Cob art colony) and Fairfield Museum and History Center. She has curated exhibits on American art and artists over her career and earned art history degrees from Princeton University (AB) and the University of Delaware (MA).

Generously sponsored by Cindy Raney & Team.