In conjunction with the construction of the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, completed in 1952, Dorothy Liebes was commissioned to create an innovative series of expandable screens for the Delegates Dining Room, the restaurant on the fourth floor of the UN Conference Building. It is not known how she was selected for the job, or how it was coordinated with the rest of the headquarters’ construction, but plainly such a commission—for this building complex that symbolized the goal of global peace in the immediate postwar years—was an important one. In her memoir, Liebes described her commitment to the overarching aims of the UN and hence this design project, writing, “Because I believe strongly in the United Nations, it was gratifying to be asked to weave some screens for that building. They were eight feet high and used as temporary walls to divide the main dining room into four intimate rooms. We designed them in the United Nations colors, blue and white, the materials were bamboo half-rounds shot through with metal threads. My chief assistant Ralph Higbee wove the dividers.”[1]
For the screens, Liebes drew her palette of neutrals, metallics, and blue from the building materials and from the blue used in the UN logo. Both the textile design and the structure of the screens were devised in response to the proposed function of the space: it would serve as a communal dining room. Liebes developed an ingenious system of flexible, movable partitions that created “rooms” within the large space, referencing the social nature of the dining room and enabling diners to feel part of the larger social scene while also enjoying the relative privacy offered by the outstretched room dividers.[2] The screens were attached to a metal track system and could be expanded or collapsed, meaning they could be configured to create up to four small “rooms” within the open-plan interior. Each screen measured 8 feet tall by 15 feet wide (2.4 by 4.6 meters) when fully extended. Toward the tops of the screens, broad bands of open space offered a sense of transparency and signaled a connection to the larger interior beyond while still protecting the privacy of dining parties. The screens’ warps grouped to form striped bands with areas of exposed reed, allowing light to flow through from the floor-to-ceiling windows on the building’s eastern façade. Archival images show the dining room in two configurations: open and divided (Figs. 1, 2). The building’s East River views provided visual interest during daytime hours, and at night the exterior lights on the river, bridges, and nearby buildings caught and refracted off the metallic fibers interwoven throughout the screens, creating a vibrant play of brilliant lights.
It is not known when the blinds were removed from the dining room, but they are not present in photographs of the space as of the early 1960s. The blinds, along with all other textiles at the United Nations headquarters, were subject to stringent New York City fireproofing regulations. It is likely that the chemicals used in this process caused catastrophic damage to the myriad yarns used to create the blinds. [3]
NOTES
[1] Dorothy Liebes, autobiography (unpublished ms.), p. 420. Dorothy Liebes Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
[2] For more on the textiles created for the UN Conference Building interiors, see Alexa Griffith Winton, “A Striking Juxtaposition: Handwoven Textiles in the United Nations Conference Building Interior,” Journal of Modern Craft 8, no. 2 (July 2015): 181–93.
[3] For more on the conservation issues related to the fireproofing of textiles at the United Nations, see Lisa Nilsen, “Sustainable Textile Art?—An Investigation into Flame Retardants,” accessed January 25, 2015, https://www.iiconservation.org/node/3704.
