DOYLESTOWN, PA —The largest solo exhibition of the 50-year career of Bucks County sculptor and painter Charlotte Schatz (1929-2023) is on view at the Michener Art Museum from November 16, 2024—March 9, 2025.
Schatz, who lived and worked most of her professional life in Levittown, Pennsylvania, produced vibrant industrial-themed pieces in response to the decaying factories she photographed, and often trespassed, in Philadelphia’s Old City and Northern Liberties neighborhoods.
After raising a family and pursuing a fine arts degree as an adult, Schatz created enigmatic, abstract sculptures from metal and unusual materials like PVC pipes, mirrors, Plexiglas, and polyfoams. In the late 1970s, she became aware of the danger of the chemicals she worked with and slowly transitioned to painting and drawing. Charlotte Schatz: Industrial Strength brings together two major bodies of her work for the first time: her minimalist sculptures and her “neo-”Precisionist paintings produced 25 years later, known as the Urban Ruins series.
These brightly colored depictions of the region’s urban decay document many sites that no longer exist, such as Schmidt’s Brewery, a building that imploded in 2000, or scenes at Bethlehem Steel. Charlotte Schatz: Industrial Strength investigates the visual and material connections between the artist’s sculpture and paintings as she captured the changing industrial landscape nearby.
This exhibition relates Schatz’s full profile as an artist who embraced themes and materials typically associated with male artists in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
“Schatz was casting and manipulating metal, cutting mirrors into infinite geometric reflections, slicing urethane foam with hot knives, and cutting yards of PVC pipes,” guest curator Cheryl Harper said. “These are processes that were not typically pursed by female artists at the time.” Harper’s career overlapped with Charlotte Schatz, the two even renting studio space at the same building in Northern Liberties in the 1990s.
Bruce Katsiff, the chair of the art department at the Bucks County Community College (BCCC) and later an executive director of the Michener Art Museum, hired Schatz to teach sculpture in 1973. As most of the art students at BCCC were women, Katsiff thought Schatz would be a good role model. “Charlotte was a trail blazer who proved that a five-foot-two woman could successfully use a drill press or hammer copper on an anvil,” Katsiff said. Schatz taught at BCCC for 30 years, where she helped launch many art careers, until she retired in 1998 as Professor Emerita.
“As an arts educator, I find Schatz’s art and story profoundly compelling,” said Michener Art Museum executive director Anne Corso. “Like many women of her generation, she married young and dedicated her earlier years to family. Her long-held dream of pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree did not begin until the age of thirty-five with all her children in school. I hope visitors see Schatz’s tenacity in the work she produced over her longstanding career.”
Schatz was named a “Pennsylvania Treasure” by former Philadelphia Mayor Edward Rendell in 1998. She was awarded a Leeway Foundation Grant in 2000, and was the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner grant in 2004. Her artwork graces public and private collections across both the United States and Europe, as well as the Michener Art Museum’s permanent holdings.
Schatz knew an exhibition at the Michener Museum was underway and was delighted by the prospect, but sadly, she passed away on February 9, 2023, at the age of 93. “While Schatz passed away last year, this project brought us together again,” Harper said. “It was a pleasure to work with her family and friends in developing the exhibition.” Schatz’s three daughters gave Harper complete access to her last studio in Philadelphia’s Kennedy House in order to organize her archive and catalog her art. The Michener is honored to share her legacy with a wider audience.
Harper will give museum visitors a one-time personal tour of the exhibition on Dec. 11. An illustrated catalog of the exhibition, featuring an essay by Harper, is available for purchase at the museum gift shop.
Charlotte Schatz: Industrial Strength is generously supported by Tim Griffith and Anne Corso and an anonymous donor.
More information: michenerartmuseum.org
