FAIRFIELD, Conn. — Fairfield University Art Museum is pleased to present Famous & Family: Through the Lens of Trude Fleischmann, the first solo museum exhibition of the photographer’s work to be presented in the United States, on view from May 2 – July 26, 2025, in the Museum’s Bellarmine Hall Galleries.
This landmark show will present over 100 photographs by the Austrian-born photographer Trude Fleischmann (1895-1990), one of the most accomplished female photographers of the 20th century. The show will highlight her groundbreaking career in Vienna during the 1920s and 1930s, as well as her influential work in the United States after her emigration in 1940.
After opening her own studio in Vienna at the age of just 25, Fleischmann had great success there in the 1920s and 30s photographing artists, dancers, actors, and other key cultural figures of the era. When the Nazis invaded during the Anschluss in 1938, she fled first to London and then to New York. She opened a studio just behind Carnegie Hall on 56th Street in 1940 and photographed many of the artists and intellectuals of the day, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Albert Einstein.
Lenders to the exhibition include the Wien Museum, in Vienna, Austria, the New York Public Library, and private collectors. Importantly, it will also feature never-before-exhibited works from Fleischmann and Cornides family collections, as well as the family collection of her student and life-long friend, photographer Helen Post (1907-1979). These works will provide an unprecedented and intimate view of the photographer’s personal and professional legacy.
On view in the gallery, in addition to the photographs, will be a documentary entitled In nackter Gesesllschaft (The Naked Gaze) (2019), by Katherina Lochmann and Pogo Kreiner, informed by Anna Auer’s interview with Trude Fleischmann at her home in retirement in Lugano, Switzerland. The film brings to life Fleischmann’s photo studio and its elite clientele during 1920s and 30s.
Fleischmann’s work is included in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Getty Museum, the Wien Museum, the Albertina Museum, and many other important public and private collections around the world.
The exhibition is curated by Museum Executive Director Carey Weber together with Trude Fleischmann’s cousin Barbara Loss. A fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by the artist’s biographer Heike Herrberg will be available in the galleries. A selection of programming has been created to complement the exhibition, including an opening night talk with the curator of the Fleischmann retrospective at the Wien Museum in 2011, Frauke Kreutler and a gallery talk with Barbara Loss, her brother Dr. Henry Rosenberg, and Heike Herrberg discussing Fleischmann’s photographs of family and friends. The final program will be a talk on Heimat photography by Elizabeth Cronin, Robert B. Menschel Curator of Photography, Wallach Division, The New York Public Library. The Heimat or homeland movement advocated for the landscape and its preservation, and encouraged national pride. This talk will explore the importance of the Austrian landscape during the 1920s and 30s, when Austrian photographers like Fleischmann began defining their Heimat with images of the mountains, strong peasants at work, skiing and mountain climbing, countering the fragility of the newly-formed First Austrian Republic.
Thursday, May 1, 5 p.m.
Opening Lecture: Famous & Family: Through the Lens of Trude Fleischmann
Frauke Kreutler, curator, Wien Museum, Vienna, Austria
Dolan School of Business Event Hall and and via livestream on www.thequicklive.com
Part of the Edwin L. Weisl, Jr. Lectureships in Art History, funded by the Robert Lehman Foundation
Thursday, May 1, 6-8 p.m.
Reception: Famous & Family: Through the Lens of Trude Fleischmann
Bellarmine Hall, Bellarmine Hall Galleries and Great Hall
Join us from 6-8 p.m. as we celebrate the opening of Famous & Family: Through the Lens of Trude Fleischmann with drinks, light appetizers, and Viennese music performed by a string quartet.
Friday, May 2, 12 noon
Gallery Talk: Heike Herrberg, Barbara Loss, and Dr. Henry Rosenberg Discuss Trude Fleischmann as Family Photographer
Bellarmine Hall, Bellarmine Hall Galleries
Wednesday, May 7, 12 Noon
Gallery Talk: Presentation by Fairfield University Art Museum Executive Director Carey Mack Weber, followed by a conversation with Barbara Rosenberg Loss.
Organized by the Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art, Inc.
Saturday, May 10, 12:30 – 2 p.m. and 2:30 – 4 p.m.
Family Day: Gold and Glitter in Vienna!
Arts and crafts for ages 4-10. Space is limited; registration required.
Thursday, June 12, 5 p.m.
Lecture: Heimat Photography and the Art of Trude Fleischmann
Elizabeth Cronin, Robert B. Menschel curator of photography, Wallach Division, The New York Public Library
Bellarmine Hall, Diffley Board Room and via livestream on www.thequicklive.com
Fairfield University is a modern, Jesuit Catholic University, rooted in one of the world’s oldest intellectual and spiritual traditions. More than 6,000 undergraduate and graduate students from 46 states, 73 foreign countries, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are enrolled in the University’s five schools. In the spirit of rigorous and sympathetic inquiry into all dimensions of human experience, Fairfield welcomes students from diverse backgrounds to share ideas and engage in open conversations. The University is located in the heart of a region where the future takes shape, on a stunning campus on the Connecticut coast just an hour from New York City.