Marianne Eggler, PhD
Education
BA, University of Rochester
MPhil, PhD, The Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York
Biography
Marianne Eggler is an art, architecture, and design historian. A native New Yorker, she studied graphic design at Rochester Institute of Technology and then received a Bachelor of Arts degree in art history from the University of Rochester followed by a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.
Eggler has lectured extensively in the United States and abroad on the subject of modern art and design and has served as museum educator at The Museum of Modern Art since 1998. Her research focuses on modern architecture and design and in particular, the domestic interior in relation to issues of gender and the decorative. In her doctoral dissertation, "A Decorator in the Best Sense": Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Lilly Reich, the Fabric Curtain Partition, and the Articulation of the German Modern Interior," Eggler explores the domestic interiors of Mies and Reich. In particular, she examines their use of moveable fabric space partitions, an overlooked topic in the history of modern architecture and interior design. It considers these soft curtain/walls through the lenses of gender and the decorative and within the broader context of Weimar Germany.
Eggler's articles and reviews have appeared in The Architect’s Newspaper, The Journal of Architecture, Metropolis, and Studies in the Decorative Arts, and her essays appear in the design history anthologies Design History Beyond the Canon and Visualizing the Nineteenth-Century Home: Modern Art and the Decorative Impulse.
Research Interests
modern architecture, modern design, modern interior design, German modernism, domestic architecture and interior design, the history of interior decoration
Selected Publications
Upcoming: Book review of The Edith Farnsworth House: Architecture, Preservation, Culture by Michelangelo Sabatino, in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, June, 2025
Book review of Screen Interiors: From Country Houses to Cosmic Heterotopias, eds. Pat Kirkham and Sarah A. Lichtman, book review in Design and Culture, 1–4, 8/14/2024.
Marianne Eggler, Erica Morawski and Sara Desverine Reed, “The case of William Pahlmann: Challenging the canon of modern design,” in Design History Beyond the Canon, eds. Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler, Victoria Rose Pass and Christopher S. Wilson (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 189-208.
Book review of Hitler at Home, by Despina Stratigakos, in Design & Culture, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Nov. 2016), pp. 382-384.
“Imperial Anxiety and Aggressive Décor: Imaging the Domestic Interior of German Kaiserreich,” in Visualizing the Nineteenth-Century Home: Modern Art and the Decorative Impulse, ed. Anca Lasc, London: Taylor & Frances, 2016
“Paul Scheerbart, Josiah McElheny, and the Artist as Magus,” book review of Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!: A Paul Scheerbart Reader, eds. Josiah McElheny and Christine Burgin, in The Architect’s Newspaper, June 3, 2016
“Paul Scheerbart, Josiah McElheny, and the Artist as Magus,” book review of Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!: A Paul Scheerbart Reader, eds. Josiah McElheny and Christine Burgin, in The Journal of Architecture 20(5): 919-922, Oct. 20, 2015
"Divide and Conquer: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich’s Fabric Partitions at the Tugendhat House," Studies in the Decorative Arts, journal of The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in Design, Decorative Arts and Culture, Spring–Summer 2009 (Volume XVI, Number 2) http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/652505
“Afrikanischestrasse Municipal Housing,” p. 206, and “Exhibition House and Apartment for a Bachelor,” p. 264, in Barry Bergdoll and Terence Riley, eds., Mies in Berlin (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2001)
Conferences and Presentations
Conference Session Chaired
“Surrealist Gestures and Material Transformations in Interior Decor, 1930-1970,” at the College Art Association Annual Conference, NY, NY, February 15-18, 2017)
Conference Talks
“Imperial Anxiety and Aggressive Décor: Imaging the Domestic Interior of the German Kaiserreich,” College Art Association 101st Annual Conference, New York, New York, February 13–16, 2013
Draw the Drapes: Mies, Reich, Curtains and Curtain Walls, or, Modernism’s (Anxious) Mechanisms for the New Domestic Interior, Dorich House 8th Annual Conference, organized by the Centre for the Study of the Design of the Modern Interior, Kingston University, U.K, 5/2006
Change from within: Bruno Paul, Mies, and the Wilhelmine modern interior from Wohnzimmer to Raumkunst, College Art Association 2005 Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA, 2/2005
“A decorator in the best sense” – Mies van der Rohe, Ornament and Gender, Universität der Künste, Berlin, Germany, 10/2003
Bringing Home the Exotic: India and the Interior Designs of Lockwood de Forest, The Newport Symposium, Newport, RI, 5/2001
Grants
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute participant, “Teaching the History of Modern Design: The Canon and Beyond,” at Drexel University, Philadelphia (July 6-31, 2015)
2004 Fulbright Fellowship Alternate
Awards
Citation of Special Recognition, Carter Manny Award, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, 2003
Jewish Foundation for Education of Women Dissertation Fellowship, 2003
Sue Zalk Research -Travel Fellowship, 2003
Martin M. Spiaggia Dissertation Fellowship (declined to accept JFEW), 2003
CUNY Graduate Center Graduate Teaching Fellowship (declined to accept JFEW), 2003
Courses
- HA 112 History of Art and Civilization: Renaissance to the Modern Era
- HA 214 Art in New York
- HA 220 History of the Modern Interior: The Modern Interior as Space and Image
- HA 231 Modern Art
- HA 314 Bauhaus
- HA 332 Modern Architecture
- HA 345 History of Industrial Design