At this full-day professional development workshop, teachers are invited to look through the curatorial lenses of two artists—Françoise Grossen, a fiber artist who rejected the loom in the 1960s to create a novel kind of weaving through knotting rope, and Lauren Kalman, a performance artist and metalsmith whose practice investigates beauty, adornment, body image, value, and consumer culture.
 
In the morning, MAD’s Windgate Research and Collections Curator Elissa Auther will join Grossen in leading teachers through a discussion of the work on view in Françoise Grossen Selects. Part of MAD’s POV series, the exhibition displays works Grossen mined from the Museum’s permanent collection of unusual baskets and fiber art together with the artist’s own rope sculptures.
 
In the afternoon, Assistant Curator Barbara Paris Gifford will lead a tour and discussion of Lauren Kalman: But if the Crime Is Beautiful…, another POV exhibition for which Kalman selected gold works from the MAD jewelry collection and presented them with her signature gold leaves. In doing so, Kalman has transformed the Museum’s Tiffany & Co Jewelry Gallery, highlighting the relationship between decoration and female sexuality.
 
Teachers will also meet with MAD’s Artist Educators to discuss teaching strategies and will have the opportunity to make their own fiber works.