Aline Bernstein: America’s First Important

Professional Woman Theatrical Designer

As a graduate of the New York School of Applied Design, and a student of painter Robert Henri, Aline Bernstein (1880-1955) found early artistic expression in portrait painting, but she was also a behind-the-scenes volunteer at the Henry Street Settlement, which later became the Neighborhood Playhouse.  From 1915 to 1924 Bernstein designed and executed costumes for at least fifteen plays at the Settlement. 

In 1924, for the Neighborhood Playhouse, Bernstein designed both the costumes and set for a production of The Little Clay Cart, which won Bernstein widespread critical acclaim and initiated her distinguished career as a major scenic designer. Two years later she became the first woman accepted into the United Scenic Artists union. 

Continuing to design for the Neighborhood Playhouse through 1929, some of Bernstein’s most notable projects include the expressionist settings and costumes for the first American production of The Dybbuk (1925), and a series of satiric designs she created for an annual parody of the Broadway seasons of 1924 through 1929, The Grand Street Follies.

In early 1928 Bernstein began working with Eva Le Gallienne at the Civic Repertory Theatre, where as resident designer for the next four years, she designed an average of five shows a year.  Her major contribution to the productions at the Civic was her design for a reusable unit set that provided dozens of ways in which doors, windows, and other inserts could be added and arranged to create mise-en-scénes for a wide range of plays, saving both time and money for the theatre.

By 1934 the Neighborhood Theatre and the Civic Repertory Theatre had closed, turning Bernstein’s focus toward the Theatre Guild and other independent producers, including Herman Shumlin’s production of Lillian Hellman’s first play, The Children’s Hour, as well as Hellman’s The Little Foxes. Over the years she designed The Male Animal by James Thurber and Elliott Nugent, Samuel Taylor’s The Happy Time (1950), and from 1943 to 1949 Bernstein was an instructor of costume design and consultant to the Experimental Theatre at Vassar College. 

In 1949, at the age of seventy, Bernstein won the Antoinette Perry Award for her costume designs for the opera Regina, one of four shows she designed that season.  Her last design project for the stage was for costumes for the 1953 off-Broadway production of The World of Sholom Aleichem. 

In addition to her long and distinguished design career, Aline Bernstein helped to establish the Museum of Costume Art, which later became the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and served as president of the institution from 1944 until her death in 1955 in New York.

--Phil Groeschel

Sources and further readings:

Bernstein, Aline. “Costume.” Our Theatre Today: A Composite Handbook on the Art,

Craft, and Management of the Contemporary Theatre. Herschel L. Bricker, Ed. New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1963.

Black, Cheryl. “Designing Women.” The Women of Provincetown, 1915-1922. 

Tuscaloosa and London: The University of Alabama Press, 2002.

Crowley, Alice Lewisohn. The Neighborhood Playhouse: Leaves From a Theatre

Scrapbook. New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1959.

Klein, Carole. Aline. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

*Image courtesy of NYPL website.