History of the Museum
For over half a century, the Museum of Arts and 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 media such as clay, glass, wood, metal, and fiber.
The seed for the Museum, however, was planted more than 60 years ago, when Aileen Osborn Webb, the nation's premier craft patron and benefactor, established the American Craftsmen's Council in 1942. The Council's original goal was to recognize the work of American craftspeople and to make the general public aware of the vitality that contemporary craft expression could bring to an age of machine-made products. The Council created educational programs and competitions that promoted technical excellence among craftspeople and celebrated the beauty of the handmade object. The success of these programs revealed a need for a museum dedicated to contemporary American craft.
In 1956, and with Mrs. Webb's continuing support, the Museum of Contemporary Crafts opened in a Victorian brownstone at 29 West 53rd Street. In the decades that followed, the Museum broadened its vision and expanded the scope of its exhibitions and programs. The inaugural exhibition, Craftsmanship in a Changing World, documented the emerging role of craft artists and their influence as teachers, production workers, designers, and architectural collaborators.
In 1986, the museum moved to its present location in four floors of a new building at 40 West 53rd Street and was renamed the American Craft Museum. The Museum's new space - designed by Roche-Dinkeloo, with an interior created by Fox & Fowle Architects - doubled the space of the original quarters. The opening exhibition was Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical, which articulated the direction of the Museum's new era. Some of the objects were purely functional, while others placed a higher value on visual expression and conceptual content.
Today, the Museum celebrates materials and processes that are 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, adopted in 2002, reflects this wider spectrum of interest, as well as the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of the Museum's permanent collection and exhibition programming.
MAD has presented more than 560 exhibitions, organizes more than 75 major public programs per year, and welcomes more than 275,000 visitors annually. The Museum has built a distinguished permanent collection of more than 2,000 objects that documents the history of the field from the mid-20th century to the present.
In 2008, the Museum will move into its new home at 2 Columbus Circle in New York City. Working in collaboration with architect Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture, MAD has developed a building design that will enable the institution to meet the growing public demand for its exhibitions and educational programming, and to display its rapidly expanding permanent collection. The design also will weave the Museum into the social and cultural fabric of the newly revived Columbus Circle and its surrounding neighborhoods. The design includes a new façade that features textured terracotta panels and transparent fritted glass, materials that express the Museum's craft traditions.
The visionary Aileen Osborn Webb believed the institution should collect, display and interpret objects that exemplify and celebrate creativity in art, craft, and design. The Museum, which continues to honor her vision in all of its activities, places a unique emphasis on the essentials that link all of the creative arts: materials, techniques, and the artist's engagement with process. Through its collections, exhibitions and educational programs, the Museum of Arts and Design encourages awareness and appreciation of art, craft and design in daily life.