Rena Rosenthal

Known principally for her exclusive Madison Avenue retail shop in New York City, she was an influential arbiter of taste and fashion in the interior decorating world, particularly during the introduction of modernism to North America.

Rena Rosenthal was a promoter of applied arts in the modernist style whose patronage helped launch the careers of such noted designers as Donald Deskey, Tommi Parzinger, Ernst Schwadron and Russel Wright.

[2] Many of these items were sourced in her father's and husband's native Austria; her shop distributed wares from the Wiener Werkstätte and from the Viennese designer Karl Hagenauer.

[3][4] She introduced the work of Austrian enamel artist Mizi Otten to North America,[5] and was an early promoter of English potter and painter T. S.

She handled art works that ended up in collections of notable individuals like Geoffrey Beene[9] and institutions such as the Cooper-Hewitt[10] Smithsonian Design Museum.