DESCRIPTION
Maison Gerard was founded by Gerardus A. Widdershoven in 1974. The gallery quickly established a reputation as New York’s premier source for fine French Art Deco furniture, lighting, and objets d’art. In addition to presenting important works of Jean-Michel Frank, Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, and Jules Leleu, the gallery has been instrumental in building numerous private and public collections, notably the collection of Walter Chrysler Jr. (now housed in the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA), and the Design Collection of the Utsonomia Museum in Japan.
In the late ‘90s, Benoist F. Drut joined Maison Gerard as a partner. Drut began broadening the gallery’s scope to include both midcentury and contemporary design, and fostered the development of a wide range of recognized contemporary designers—such as Hervé van der Straeten, Achille Salvagni, and Franck Chartrain—and emerging and established artists alike—Kiko Lopez, Ayala Serfaty, and Matthew Solomon, to name a few. His mission was to collect a body of work as well-grounded in the past as it was keenly attuned to the future.
Today, Maison Gerard exhibits a range of work—from French Art Deco and antiques to contemporary lighting, sculpture, and ceramics—with an emphasis on authenticity, historical context, and expertise.