Salon 94 Design

About the Presentation
S94 Design will present the ceramic female figures of Myrtle Williams (b. 1938) for the first time in New York at Independent 20th Century, anticipating the artist’s upcoming solo exhibition at the gallery this October. Imbued with her lifelong desire to give visibility to Black women, the works include portraits of singers and icons such as Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday as well as everywoman faces and busts drawn from her imagination and memory. Williams made more than 300 figures at the ceramics studio of Montgomery County Community College over the course of 35 years. “I fell in love with figures—women and Black women—because I wanted to see someone that looked like me,” she has said. Williams and her husband, Dr John T. Williams Sr, have long championed Black artists and Black figuration through their private collection, which includes works by Barkley L. Hendricks, Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, and Charles White alongside African masks, figures, and rare Black dolls

About the Gallery
Salon 94 Design debuted in 2017 as an extension of Salon 94, devoted to furniture, design, and objects. The venture was a natural outgrowth of founder Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn’s attitude that objects, beyond their functionality, express our values, ideas, philosophy, and history. Greenberg Rohatyn has been a radical thinker breaking hierarchies between design and art. For the past decade, the gallery started in her home on East 94th Street, and since 2020 in its Beaux-Arts flagship on East 89th Street had offered a test ground to seamlessly show furniture and objects alongside art.

S94D continues representation for Donald Judd Furniture, Max Lamb, Kwangho Lee, Philippe Malouin, Jay Sae Jung Oh, Rick Owens Furniture, Gaetano Pesce, Thomas Barger, Tom Sachs Furniture, Karl Fritsch Kate Millett, Gloria Kisch, and more.

3 East 89th Street opened to the public in March 2021, activated by Salon 94 and Salon 94 Design under the auspices of the S94+ Foundation. The building now serves as the headquarters of S94 Design

The historic landmark building, built between 1913 and 1915 by celebrated architect and decorator Ogden Codman, was originally owned by arts philanthropist Archer Huntington and sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington before the pair gifted the building to The National Academy of Design in 1940. Architect Rafael Viñoly has restored and renovated the building, his fourth project with Greenberg Rohatyn.