Agnes Chandelier
The custom made chandelier by Lindsey Adelman in the Heckscher-Ohlin Room is part of a series of luminaries created by Adelman called Agnes.
Adelman drew inspiration for the series from the fictional heroine Agnes, who worked in the Californian mines during the 1849 Gold Rush—a job once considered the most dangerous in the world. In such a harsh and risky environment, flexible lighting was essential. And so, the Agnes Chandelier was born.
Lindsey Adelman (b. 1968, New York) considers herself a light sculptor: her work treads the porous border between sculpture and design. In 2006, with the goal of transforming the ephemeral nature of light into something not merely tangible but enduring, she launched Lindsey Adelman Studio with her very first product, the Branching Bubble chandelier. Since then, she has explored the visual tension between organic and industrial forms in a number of disciplines, introducing boundary-challenging designs from an innovative palette of materials. Combining hand-blown glass with the strong industrial beauty of machine-milled components, her lighting creates radiant warmth while underscoring the drama of shadows and emptiness. A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, her work has been shown at The Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, The Future Perfect – a platform for collectable contemporary design, Nilufar Gallery in Milano, and TIWA Select Gallery in New York.