Press Room

Information is subject to change. Please contact the MAD press office at 212.299.7713 for more information.

New York, NY (September 20, 2009)

The Museum of Arts and Design explores how art, craft and design intersect in the visual arts today. The Museum focuses on contemporary creativity and the ways in which artists and designers from around the world transform materials through processes ranging from the handmade to cutting-edge technologies.

Upcoming Exhibitions
Read My Pins: The Madeleine Albright Collection
September 30, 2009 – January 31, 2010

Read My Pins presents a selection of over 200 pins from the former Secretary of State’s personal collection in correlation with the publication of her book of the same name. While serving under President Clinton, Secretary Albright became known for selecting pins or brooches that conveyed her views as appropriate to the specific occasion. This unusual diplomatic strategy evolved from the time when, having been referred to as serpent by Saddam Hussein’s press, she pinned a snake on her suit for her next meeting on Iraq. Over the years, her pins became a part of her public persona. Many of these involved fascinating and humorous stories that in time chart the course of an extraordinary journey, and carve out a visual path through international and cultural diplomacy.

Read My Pins will be shown in the museum’s Tiffany & Co. Gallery, dedicated to the presentation of jewelry. The lively exhibition highlights the expressive nature of jewelry and its ability to communicate through a style and language of its own. Whether the arena is world politics, a corporate board room, a social gathering, or a more intimate setting, jewelry can be an important part of what we convey to others, and of how we think about ourselves. The exhibition is generously supported by Bren Simon.

Slash: Paper Under the Knife
October 7, 2009 – April 4, 2010

Slash: Paper Under the Knife takes the pulse of the international art world’s renewed interest in paper as a creative medium and source of artistic inspiration, examining the remarkably diverse use of paper in a range of art forms. Slash is the third exhibition in MAD’s Materials and Process series, which examines the renaissance of traditional handcraft materials and techniques in contemporary art and design. The exhibition surveys unusual paper treatments, including works that are burned, torn, cut by lasers, and shredded. A section of the exhibition will focus on artists who modify books to transform them into sculpture, while another will highlight the use of cut paper for film and video animations.

Selected artists will be commissioned to create site-specific or site-referential works, and others will be invited to create work onsite in MAD’s three artist studios that will subsequently be installed in the exhibition.

Slash: Paper under the Knife is made possible by Kate’s Paperie. Generous additional support is provided by the Angelica Berrie Foundation.

Ghost Stories, New Designs from Nendo
October 27, 2009 – January 10, 2010

The newest projects and prototypes from the renowned design studio Nendo will be seen for the first time at the Museum of Arts and Design this October. From October 27 through January 10, 2010, Ghost Stories, New Designs from Nendo will transform the MADProjects Gallery on the Museum’s second floor into a magical landscape of new designs that imbue chairs, vases, and lamps with whimsy and optical illusion. Founded and led by Oki Sato, Nendo has garnered international attention and more than 45 design awards for its beautifully simple yet surprisingly humorous work in interiors, furniture, product design, graphics and architecture.

The Nendo installation is the second exhibition in the MADProjects Gallery, which was launched in February 2009 with Totally Rad, a focused survey of the latest radiator designs, curated by Karim Rashid. Both timely and provocative, this ongoing program invites curators, collaborators and leading voices in the field to explore emerging trends and innovations in design.

Bigger, Better, More: The Art of Viola Frey
January 26 – May 2, 2010

A pioneer of California ceramics known for her colossal clay statues, Viola Frey, who was a keen observer of people and the world around her, has been called a visual anthropologist and an urban archaeologist. Bigger, Better, More: The Art of Viola Frey features the artist’s monumental ceramic figures, bricolage sculptures, paintings, and works on paper.

Emerging from abstract expressionist traditions in the 1950s, Frey became involved in ceramics as her contemporaries Peter Voulkos and Robert Arneson were taking this medium to new sculptural and expressive horizons. Frey was attracted to mass-produced ceramic figurines which she collected in flea markets, and created her bricolage sculptures from assemblages of these forms. She countered the sentimentality associated with these small commercial figurines through the large scale of her composite works, which allowed her to address issues of power. She articulated these stiff figures, some as tall as 11 feet, with angry or trancelike expressions and loosely decorated garments. The installation at the Museum of Arts and Design will include several of these large-scale figural works and a number of works that contextualize Frey’s engagement with historical and vernacular ceramics. The exhibition will also examine her collaboration with ceramicist Betty Woodman.

Bigger, Better, More: The Art of Viola Frey was co-organized by the Gardiner Museum, Toronto and the Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin.