New Name Reflects Interdisciplinary Nature of the Creative Process and Full Range of Museum's Collecting Activities and Programming
NEW YORK, October 1, 2002 - The American Craft Museum today announced that it is changing its name to Museum of Arts & Design. The Museum's new name expresses the institution's mission as a contemporary museum dedicated to celebrating materials and the processes of transforming them into expressive objects -transcending the boundaries that currently separate craft, art and design. The name change also affirms the Museum's commitment to presenting the work of artists from around the world and its role as an international educational resource.
"Craft, art and design are overlapping and inextricably linked fields of creative activity that need to be appreciated as a continuum," noted Holly Hotchner, the Museum's Director. "The new name more accurately reflects the interdisciplinary and inclusive nature of our collections and programming. We are a contemporary museum about materials and creative processes, which are at the core of all the arts. We are dedicated to exploring how today's artists and designers-coming from increasingly diverse artistic backgrounds-engage and experiment with different materials and approaches to making objects."
"Since the founding of the Museum in 1956, the understanding and meaning of the term 'craft' has changed," added David Revere McFadden, the Museum's chief curator. "The system of categorization that was imposed on the arts in the 19th century introduced boundaries and distinctions where none truly exist. Today's artists, designers, and architects move comfortably between different media and modes of creativity, experimenting with new materials and technologies to create diverse forms of artistic expression. The more traditional way of understanding creative expression -which can be traced back to the Renaissance and, even earlier to the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, or seen more recently in the Bauhaus, Art Deco, Wiener Werkstätte and other movements- better serves the state of the arts today."
"We are not abandoning craftsmanship, which denotes skill in creating objects as well as executing commissions and prototypes for production," explains Barbara Tober, chair of the Museum's Board. "The name change reflects what has been true throughout history-that 'craft' is an artform equal to all others."
About the Evolution of Craft
The word "craft" was first used to describe the skillful craftsmanship of Renaissance artisans who displayed a particular sensitivity to materials in creating one-of-a-kind objects primarily functional in nature, such as the work of goldsmiths, furniture makers, and stonemasons. It has assumed many meanings over the past two centuries, and continues to evolve today.
In the 19th century, art critics and writers referred to the term "craft" to distinguish unique handmade objects from what were considered poorly-designed and anonymous consumer goods and mass-produced industrial objects. While "craft" came to denote functional objects and the decorative arts, the term "fine art" emerged to describe painting and sculpture. These denominations reflect the power structure and classification system that developed in the art world. The fine arts were assumed to carry greater social, aesthetic, and philosophical meaning, while craft-always linked to the material world of objects rather than spiritual ideas-was considered lower in the hierarchy of artistic creation. In the late-19th century, theorists and practitioners sought to link craftsmanship with art by further distinguishing craftsmanship from the commercial world of design and manufacture.
The Arts and Crafts movement was a response to the industrial revolution, advocating that well-designed buildings, furniture, and household goods would improve society. Various design reformers in the 19th century advocated an integrated approach to the art, design, and craft. Many of the major 20th-century movements in design, such as the Wiener Werkstätte and the Bauhaus, were nourished by the creativity that emerges with this integration. No art was considered superior-they were all equal and dedicated to the creation of the totally designed and unified environment.
In the second half of the 20th century, the hierarchy in the arts-with the fine arts at the apex of a triangle of which craft and design formed the base-was further called into question. Artists, designers, and craft practitioners recognized the profound interconnections between these fields and explored abstract ideas and forms while drawing upon traditional craft materials and techniques in creating new work. Craft evolved into an interdisciplinary vehicle of individual artistic expression, radical experimentation, and the skilled ability to transform materials into significant form.
The triangular paradigm does not reflect the true state of the arts today, which are interdependent with many other fields of creativity, including fashion, interior design, architecture, new media, performing art, and pop culture. New materials and technologies have emerged, rendering the 19th-century classification system obsolete. "Craft" stands for creative activity, process, method and purpose rather than a class of objects, transcending the boundaries that separate craft, art, and design.
About the Museum of Arts & Design
For nearly half a century, the Museum of Arts & Design -formerly the American Craft Museum-has served as the country's premier institution dedicated to the collection and exhibition of contemporary objects created in craft media-such as clay, glass, wood, metal, and fiber. The Museum celebrates materials and processes that are today embraced by practitioners in the fields of craft, art and design, as well as architecture, fashion, interior design, technology, performing arts, and art and design-driven industries. The institution's new name reflects the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of the Museum's permanent collection and exhibition programming as it explores objects that are created at the crossroads of craft, art, and design.
Honoring the rich history of craft and craftsmanship, the Museum of Arts & Design also investigates new materials and technologies that are changing the parameters of craft today. In 2001, the Museum organized the exhibition Defining Craft I: Collecting for the New Millennium, the first in a series of traveling exhibitions that explore the changing definitions and meanings of craft in the 21st century. The exhibition examined the influence and potential of new technologies such as computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM), already used by such innovators as metalworker Stanley Lechtzin and textile artist Hideo Yamakuchi. In addition to one-of-a-kind objects, the exhibition also included craft multiples-works made in a series production-such as furniture designed by architect Frank Gehry or dishes designed by Roy Lichtenstein. The Museum will continue to collect and present one-of-a-kind prototypes made for serial production in the future.
Most recently on view at the Museum was Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation, the first in a three-part series of exhibitions that place contemporary Native American work in a broad context with current art and culture. The exhibition featured the work of artists who have embarked on new avenues of creativity, challenging commonly held preconceptions about craft, art, and design today and illustrating how art changes, develops, and evolves in response to contemporary social concerns and issues.
Other exhibitions organized in the past by the Museum to explore new developments in the field and illustrate the synergy between contemporary craft, art, and design, include Judy Chicago: Resolutions: A Stitch in Time; Tommy Simpson: Garden of the Heart; Sandy Skoglund: Breathing Glass; Peter Chang: A Visionary; and Objects for Use: Handmade by Design.
About the New Home for the Museum
Adapting to the rapid expansion of the field, a significant increase in visitorship, and an overwhelming response to its public programming in recent years, the Museum of Arts & Design is planning to relocate. Over the past five years, the Museum has experienced a nearly 100% increase in attendance to 275,000 visitors annually. An important cultural and educational resource to schoolchildren, families, artists, scholars, and tourists, the Museum was recently selected by the City of New York to purchase and renovate a 54,000-square-foot building at Two Columbus Circle and add new cultural vitality to the area.
When the Museum moves to Columbus Circle, its space will more than triple from 17,000 square feet in its current location. For the first time since its founding in 1956, the Museum will be able to present and expand its permanent collection of over 1700 art objects, including ceramics, fiber, glass, metal, paper, wood, mixed media, and design-one of the most distinguished collections of its kind in the world.
"The new home for the Museum will allow us to adequately respond to the tremendous growth of our collections, audiences, and educational and exhibition programs in recent years," says Jerome A. Chazen, Chairman of the Museum's Capital Campaign. "We will be able to broaden our permanent holdings as well as school, public, and professional outreach programs to solidify our leadership as an educational resource dedicated to exploring the evolving and interrelated meanings of craft, design, and art in the 21st century."
The Museum's programs are currently confined to active galleries, which requires the periodic closing of these galleries to general visitors. In the new facility, the Museum will be able to provide new educational facilities, classrooms, and workshops for artists and students, including artist-in-residence programs that will allow the public to connect creative process and finished object in a direct manner.
This "vertical integration" of artists, materials, processes, objects, and audiences under one roof is unique in today's museum world. Programming will also include a greater range of lectures, seminars, decorative arts and design history courses. In addition, the Museum will use a new auditorium and theater to showcase different cultural events in collaboration with New York City's premier performing and visual arts organizations, demonstrating today's interactions among all art forms.
The new facility will also allow the Museum to establish the Center for the Study of Arts and Design. A state-of-the-art resource for learning, it will be the first international center for the study of primary source material, giving the public access to a vast library of information on the history of craft, decorative arts, and design. The Center is conceived as a link between electronic media and information technologies and three-dimensional hand made objects.
The Museum is in the process of identifying an architect for the creation of its new home at Columbus Circle, and recently announced four finalists in the competition for the project. The finalists were selected from a group of eleven architectural firms selected earlier by the Museum to develop design proposals for the project. The short list includes:
Allied Works Architecture, Inc. (Portland, OR)
Zaha Hadid (London, England)
Toshiko Mori Architect and James Carpenter Design Associates (New York, NY)
Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects (New York, NY)
The architect selection committee will name the final architect from this short list this fall.