News

The art and designs of Viktor Schreckengost will be on public display starting in April or May, when the nonprofit Viktor Schreckengost Foundation plans to open a museum in the ground floor of the historic Tower Press Building at 1900 Superior Ave., near the District of Design.

The new museum will display works from Schreckengost’s archives, which were transferred to Cleveland State University’s Michael Schwartz Library last summer. Last fall the adjacent section of East 17th Street was renamed “Viktor Schreckengost Way.”

Schreckengost graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1929. In 1933 he founded the country’s first modern, college-level industrial design program at CIA, where he continued to teach for 70 years. He is well known as the American DaVinci for the hundreds of pieces of art and products he designed. Ranging from ceramics, sculpture, and painting to furniture, toys, and bicycles, Schreckengost mastered many crafts and was one of the greatest designers in the world. In 2006 he was awarded the National Medal of Arts, the country’s highest cultural honor. He died in 2008 at 101.

Read details about the Viktor Schreckengost Museum in The Plain Dealer or Fresh Water Cleveland.