Studio EIS - History

History

StudioEIS was founded in 1977 by New York City natives Ivan Schwartz (BFA Boston University College of Fine Arts) and Elliot Schwartz (BFA California Institute of the Arts, MFA Yale University). It pioneered the design and production of innovative figurative sculptures for use as visual storytelling elements within museum settings during the 1970s. When the company was founded, museum displays were "peopled" by store mannequins. With growing resistance to using mass-produced mannequins for exhibitions, and with many museums eliminating staff positions, StudioEIS found a niche for itself in the world of narrative storytelling for museums. With the American Bicentennial at hand and a renewed interest in history, numerous museums were established across the country to address topics as diverse as civil rights, Native American history, and science and technology. This confluence of talent and need created the initial impetus for StudioEIS' work.

Museums large and small began out-sourcing displays via exhibition designers, and called upon StudioEIS to create lifelike sculptures to tell stories about American culture and its political history in vivid ways that put a face to history. StudioEIS' early commissions, for the National Civil Rights Museum and the American Museum of Natural History, were figurative, life-sized, and designed to engage the museum visitor.

With a growing reputation, StudioEIS began to work outside the museum world where innovative object making through visual storytelling was born at StudioEIS. The studio now began to work with architects, industrial and scenic designers, restaurant designers, and hotel/casino designers. Sony, the Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nike's flagship stores in Portland and Chicago, The Discovery Channel, and Martha Stewart Living are among its many corporate clients. StudioEIS' sculptures have been on display outside the United States in Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, Italy, Hong Kong, and Abu Dhabi.

The prominence of the studio grew as it became especially well known for its bronze portrait sculptures and public works, which have included sculptures of many iconic figures such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Elvis Presley, Albert Einstein, and the forty-two bronze Founding Fathers at the National Constitution Center - which may be the largest bronze sculpture project of its type in American history. Recently StudioEIS' expertise has been called upon for high-profile "forensic" reconstruction projects for George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens and the exhibition "Written in Bone" at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution.

Today StudioEIS' staff of sculptors, painters, costumers, researchers, and model-makers is enhanced by specialists in wax works, metal fabrication, and bronze casting. A project will often include collaboration with scholars in anthropology, costume history, and forensic science. The sculptures of George Washington at ages 19, 45 and 57 that were unveiled at Mount Vernon in 2006 involved state-of-the-art forensic research and computer reconstruction.