The Tremaines' concept was to refer to circa 1920s European art and design crossovers, and apply those general principles to post-WWII America and recent technological developments in their fluorescent lighting.
[2][1] The exhibition featured and referred to leading Modernists in European and American art and architecture with a connection to then-Miller Company lighting designs.
Artworks exhibited included works by Josef Albers, Leo Amino, Jean Arp / Hans Arp, Harry Bertoia, Ilya Bolotowsky, Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, Mary Callery, Stuart Davis, Max Ernst, Lyonel Feininger, Perle Fine, Juan Gris, James Guy, Jean Hélion, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, Wassily Kandinsky, Kunisada, Paul Klee, Fernand Léger, Jacques Lipchitz, John Marin, Roberto Matta, Carlos Mérida, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, László Moholy-Nagy, Ben Nicholson, Georgia O'Keeffe, I.
Rice Pereira, Pablo Picasso, Jose de Rivera, Kurt Schwitters, Charles Sheeler, Rufino Tamayo, Mark Tobey, John Tunnard and Theo van Doesburg.
[5] Photographs of Modern architectural designs accompanied the artworks starting in December 1948 and included work by Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius (Bauhaus), Oscar Niemeyer, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Also, as part of the overall Painting toward architecture initiative, Oscar Niemeyer was commissioned to make a design with Roberto Burle Marx for the unbuilt Tremaine House.
Notable early acquisitions included works like Jasper Johns' Three Flags (1958), currently housed at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych (1962), with Emily Hall Tremaine credited as a collaborator.