Ulrich exhibits futuristic art by Lee Adler, an ad agency staffer linked to ‘Mad Men’

As the new curator at the Ulrich Museum of Art, Ksenya Gurshtein needed to get familiar with the more than 6,700 pieces of artwork the museum has in its collection.

Starting with an alphabetized list of artists, she discovered the Wichita State University museum had a rather large group of works by Lee Adler. Her curiosity about an artist she hadn’t heard of revealed he was a Brooklyn artist who had a connection to the popular TV series “Mad Men.”

Even more intriguing to Gurshtein was that Adler’s pieces, done in the 1960s and 1970s, provided a futuristic look at how technology and machines would come to impact everyday life.

“I could tell he was into technology and looking inside machines,” said Gurshtein, who joined the Ulrich staff a year ago.

The result of her curiosity — which included tracking down the deceased Adler’s only child — is the current Ulrich spring exhibition “Lee Adler: A Mad Man Amid the Machines.” The exhibit includes 28 of Adler’s pieces in the Ulrich collection, along with three paintings and five of his sketchbooks on loan from his son, Derek Adler.

Lee Adler, born on the lower east side of Manhattan to Polish immigrants, had dreams of being a published writer, even studying literature at the Sorbonne in Paris, according to Derek Adler.

He ended up being a copywriter during the 1950s and 1960s at several New York City ad agencies, including McCann Erickson, the real-life Madison Avenue ad agency portrayed as the primary competitor of the “Mad Men” ad agency, Derek Adler said in a phone interview from New York City. He later taught marketing part time, besides being an artist.

His father spent a lot of time walking around Brooklyn and its historic waterfront, observing the man-made environment and seeing how the structures almost took on human shapes, said Derek Adler. Those observations, combined with Adler’s later job as marketing director at RCA, influenced his art.

His job at RCA, a major electronics company, “gave him a lot of access to a lot of the technology that he expressed in his artwork,” Derek Adler said.

“I’m real interested in an artist’s process and how people come to do what they do,” Gurshtein said.

That led her on a journey she’s called “from the archives to the attic,” going to the Archives of American Art in Washington, D.C., and eventually finding a trove of nearly 30 of Lee Adler’s sketchbooks and other works in the attic of Derek Adler’s home. Altogether, Derek Adler said, he also has 300 of his dad’s paintings and 70 editions of his prints.

In writing about the exhibit, Gurshtein points out that “in Adler’s works, the machines are humanized while human figures become machines.”

“I think it’s remarkable that in the 1970s he foresaw the entanglement of humans and technology,” Gurshtein said. For example, she said, cell phones are like added prosthetics and extensions.

Derek Adler, who came to Wichita in early February to see the exhibit, was impressed with the Ulrich’s holdings of his father’s work.

“I’m not aware of any place else that has as good of a collection,” he said.

The Ulrich likely has so many of Adler’s pieces because Martin Bush, who founded the museum in late 1974, had personally known the artist. Bush had worked in New York and had been a student and teacher at Syracuse University, where Adler had also studied.

Besides seeing the Adler collection at the current exhibition, visitors can view Adler’s works online. The Ulrich Museum unveiled its new online collection portal in late February. With the portal and its searchable database, website visitors can see more than 6,200 objects in the Ulrich’s collection.

‘Lee Adler: A Mad Man Amid the Machines’

Where: Ulrich Museum of Art, 1845 N. Fairmount, Wichita State University campus

When: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 1-5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through March 29. The museum is closed Mondays and major and university holidays.

What: An exhibition of the Ulrich’s collection of works by Lee Adler, a Brooklyn artist who once worked at an ad agency that was part of the popular “Mad Men” TV series

Cost: Free

More information: www.wichita.edu/museums/ulrich

This story was originally published March 8, 2020 at 7:01 AM.