COMMISSIONS
May 9 – June 27, 2026

COMMISSIONS brings together a selection of important works conceived for both public and private interiors, highlighting the close dialogue between architects, designers, artists, and patrons in postwar France and the United States. The exhibition reflects Demisch Danant’s longstanding focus on historically significant French design from the 1950s through the 1970s, with an emphasis on rediscovering works created for ambitious architectural environments and highly personalized commissions. 

At the center of the exhibition are two monumental textile commissions by Sheila Hicks created in 1973 for the MGIC Plaza headquarters in Milwaukee, designed by Warren Platner in collaboration with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Reflections of Versailles and La Vie en Rose exemplify Hicks’s pioneering integration of fiber art within corporate modernist architecture, transforming walls into immersive sculptural environments through wool, metallic thread, silk, and raffia. Conceived as architectural interventions rather than autonomous artworks, the commissions reflected Platner’s desire to create warm, tactile, and humane interiors within a rigorously modern setting.   

A major focus of the exhibition is a group of commissions by Joseph-André Motte, Roger Fatus, and Jacques Dumond created for public institutions, government interiors, ocean liners, and private residences during the postwar decades.

Several works by Motte stem from commissions produced in collaboration with the Mobilier National, the historic French institution responsible for furnishing state buildings and official interiors. These projects offered designers an exceptional space for experimentation at the intersection of craftsmanship, industrial production, and modernist design.

Alongside Motte’s refined and rigorously architectural seating and desk designs, works by Dumond reveal a similarly elegant approach to custom interiors through sculptural uses of steel, wood, lacquer, and leather. Together, these commissions reflect a moment when French designers were redefining modern luxury through public and private patronage alike.  

Additional works by Pierre Paulin, Janette Laverrière, and Antoine Philippon and Jacqueline Lecoq further explore the relationship between custom design, architecture, and lived space. Together, the exhibition traces how commissions offered designers and artists a unique site for experimentation, where furniture, textiles, and interiors became part of a larger spatial and social vision.