Press Room

New York, NY (January 23, 2013)

2013 marks the Museum of Arts and Design’s five-year anniversary at its Columbus Circle location. MAD will celebrate this milestone with a diverse roster of exhibitions and programs that emphasize its focus on materials, process and contemporary creation.

The Museum will inaugurate its anniversary year with Against the Grain: Wood in Contemporary Art, Craft and Design, part of MAD’s ‘Materials and Process’ series, which will examine how artists and craftspeople are using and reinterpreting wood in their work.

MAD will also expand its annual public program series investigating the current state of American Design into its very first physical exhibition: After The Museum: The Home Front 2013. The exhibition and associated programs will explore the role of the 21^st century art and design museum in shaping and echoing contemporary design practices.

Wear It or Not: Recent Jewelry Acquisitions will showcase recent additions to the Museum’s permanent collection, while Fashion Jewelry: The Collection of Barbara Berger will present one of the largest and finest collections of couture jewelry in the world. 

Then, in the fall, Body & Soul: Contemporary International Ceramics will look into the recent resurgence of the human figure in the work of ceramic artists around the world. The exhibition will highlight the works of 25 international artists – many exhibited for the first time in the US – who came to clay as painters, draughtsmen or sculptors. Also this fall, MAD will present its annual contemporary jewelry sale and exhibition, LOOT: MAD About Jewelry, October 1-5.

Closing the year, the exhibition Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital will present revolutionary works from the past decade made possible by advanced methods of computer-assisted production known as digital fabrication. The first major museum exhibition to examine this interdisciplinary trend, it will feature nearly 90 works, ranging from sculpture and furniture to fashion and transport.

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS 2013 – 2014

Against the Grain: Wood in Contemporary Art, Craft and Design
March 19 – September 15, 2013

Featuring nearly 90 installations, sculptures, furniture, and vessels, Against the Grain: Wood in Contemporary Art, Craft and Design explores the latest conceptual and technical trends in woodworking today. The exhibition, which focuses on works created since 2000, examines the ways in which artists, craftspeople and designers have incorporated modernist approaches and strategies into woodworking, including the deconstruction of vessel forms, interplay between function and form, and co-opting of woodturning and furniture techniques into sculpture.

Loosely organized around the themes of mimicry, assemblage, virtuosity and whimsy with a purpose, Against the Grain includes works by sculptors Ursula von Rydingsvard, Courtney Smith, Betye Saar, Laurel Roth, Marc Andre Robinson and William Pope.L; installation artists Gary Carsley, Sarah Oppenheimer and Alison Elizabeth Taylor; designers Maarten Baas, Sebastian Errazuriz, Elisa Strozyk and Piet Hein Eek; and studio wood artists Bud Latven, Andrew Early, Thomas Loeser and Hunt Clark. 

Against the Grain is organized by Lowery Stokes Sims, Charles Bronfman International Curator and Elizabeth Edwards Kirrane, Assistant Curator and Exhibition Project Manager.

The accompanying 160-page catalogue includes essays by Sims on the conceptual framework of the exhibition; by Kirrane who chronicles how history, environmental issues and politics have predicated the use of various woods; and by Suzanne Ramljak, editor and noted expert on craft, who examines the enduring preoccupation with wood in human cultures.

Against the Grain: Wood in Contemporary Art, Craft and Design is made possible through the support of the Windgate Charitable Foundation and, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from Larry and Madeline Mohr.

Additional support is provided by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, the Official Airline of MAD.    

After The Museum: The Home Front 2013
March 12* – June 9, 2013
* Digital components of the exhibition begin March 5.

In 2013, MAD’s annual design program The Home Front: American Design Now expands its investigation into the current state of American Design into its very first physical exhibition: After The Museum: The Home Front 2013. Featuring more than 30 individuals and collaboratives, the exhibition will explore the role of the 21^st century art and design museum in shaping and echoing contemporary design practices. After The Museum will stage and present a series of installations and more than 40 public programs—master classes, lectures, and special projects— that will examine the full breadth of the oscillating relationship between designers and cultural institutions.

Participants include AIGA/NY, Aaron Anderson and Eric Timothy Carlson, Alexandra Lange, American Design Club, Are.na, BOFFO, CLOG, D-Crit at SVA, Dexter Sinister with Erik Wyoscan, Fredericks & Mae, Garmento, JF & SON, Keetra Dean Dixon + JK Keller, The LAB at Rockwell Group, Leon Ransmeier, MatterMade, Murray Moss, Charlie O’Geen, Other Means, Pratt, Project Projects, REPLY, Rich Brilliant Willing, ROLU, Snarkitecture, Stefan Sagmeister, Superscript, Type@Cooper, Various Projects, Volume Gallery, Wanted Design, and W/–– Projects.

After the Museum: The Home Front 2013 is organized by Jake Yuzna, Manager of Public Programs, and guest curator Dan Rubinstein.

Public programs for After the Museum: The Home Front 2013 are made possible through the generous support of 1stdibs.

Wear It or Not: Recent Jewelry Acquisitions
March 12 – June 2, 2013 

Over the past five years, MAD has collected nearly 200 exceptional pieces of art jewelry. From iconic mid-twentieth-century works to computer-designed musical jewelry, Wear It or Not: Recent Jewelry Acquisitions showcases the depth and variety of the new additions to the museum’s renowned permanent collection.

The exhibition will feature nearly 130 works from around the world, with objects by artists such as Claire Falkenstein, Olaf Skoogfors and Art Smith from the studio jewelry movement of the 1950s and 60s; several silver neckpieces and cuffs from India; alongside more recent works by emerging, mid-career and established jewelry artists such as Melanie Bilenker, Kat Cole, Mari Ishikawa, Keith Lewis, Jeremy May, Edward Lane McCartney, Iris Nieuwenburg, Arjen Noordeman and Christie Wright, Beverley Price, Axel Russmeyer, Sakurako Shimizu, Verena Sieber-Fuchs and Kiff Slemmons. The exhibition will explore a range of jewelry making techniques, including computer design and digital fabrication, as well as the use of uncommon and unexpected materials to carry contemporary art jewelry beyond its decorative function into new creative realms of conceptual, social and political resonance. 

Wear It or Not: Recent Jewelry Acquisitions is organized by Ursula Ilse-Neuman, Curator of Jewelry at the Museum of Arts and Design.

Wear It or Not: Recent Jewelry Acquisitions is made possible by the Curators Circle, a leadership Museum support group.

Fashion Jewelry: The Collection of Barbara Berger
June 25 – September 22, 2013
(a portion of the exhibition will remain open through January 20, 2013)  

Featuring over 450 pieces of fashion jewelry by designers such as Miriam Haskell, Marcel Boucher, Balenciaga, Kenneth Jay Lane, and Gripoix, this exhibition will be an eye-opening display of necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, many of them one-of-a-kind, drawn from the world-renowned collection of Barbara Berger. The daughter of an American diamond merchant, Berger began her collection of some 3,000 bijoux de couture when she purchased a pair of Chanel earrings at a French flea market as a teenager and went on to assemble one of the largest and finest collections of couture jewelry in the world.

Many of the works were expressly made to be worn with haute couture clothing by fashion designers that range from Chanel to Yves Saint Laurent, and Dior to Dolce & Gabbana. The Berger collection and this exhibition are virtual encyclopedias of this exciting and provocative era of fashion history. The exhibition also underscores the continuing popularity of couture jewelry today through stellar contemporary works.

The exhibition is accompanied by a major publication on the Berger collection published by Assouline, with essays by fashion guru Iris Apfel, and by jewelry historian Harrice Simons Miller.  The publication will be available at The Store at MAD. A wide range of educational programs will accompany the exhibition, including lectures and panel discussions, designer-led exhibition tours, and hands-on jewelry workshops and demonstrations in MAD’s 6^th floor Open Studios.

The exhibition was organized by David McFadden, William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design, in collaboration with jewelry historian Harrice Simons Miller, as guest curator.

Body & Soul: New International Ceramics
September 24, 2013 – March 2, 2014

In recent years, the human figure has returned to center stage in the work of artists around the world. Body & Soul: Contemporary International Ceramics underscores the power of the figure to convey strong emotions, and also to the accessibility of the ceramic medium. Through clay, the figure becomes the catalyst for addressing the emotional impact of contemporary pressures that confront our society today. Each work, inspired by a personal incident or symbolic tale, expresses a deep emotional identity, contrasting societal, political and personal views on themes such as anxiety, mortality, memory and hope.

The exhibition will highlight approximately 25 international artists who came to clay as painters, draughtsmen or sculptors. Many are being shown for the first time in the United States. The range and quality of the works will make this exhibition significant, engaging and provocative, and bring this area of creativity into much-deserved focus.

This exhibition is organized and curated by Wendy Tarlow Kaplan with the advisement of Laurent de Verneuil, Martin S. Kaplan, and by David McFadden, William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design.

Major support for Body & Soul: New International Ceramics is provided by George Abrams, Kate and Gerald Chertavian, Chubb Insurance, Friends of Contemporary Ceramics, the Glassman Family Fund at the Boston Foundation, Hunt Alternatives Fund, Nancy Klavans, Cheryl and Philip Milstein, David and Susan Rockefeller, Michael and Karen Rotenberg, Shepherd Kaplan LLC, Lisbeth Tarlow, five anonymous donors, with additional support from a group of private donors.

LOOT: MAD About Jewelry
October 1 – 5, 2013

Now, in its 13th year, LOOT: MAD About Jewelry, MAD’s juried selling exhibition of artist-made jewelry, has earned the reputation of being the ultimate pop-up shop for contemporary art and studio jewelry by both artists and collectors alike.  LOOT will feature a range of work, including inventively modern pieces in gold, sterling silver and semiprecious stones alongside jewelry made of unexpected materials such as titanium, stainless steel, glass, wood, rubber, fabric, and found objects.  Unlike any other jewelry event in the country, LOOT gives jewelry lovers the opportunity to meet some of the most innovative creators in the field and acquire work directly from them.

Last year, MAD honored renowned jewelry artist Axel Russmeyer with the first LOOT Award for Contemporary Art Jewelry. This annual prize is in keeping with the long-standing commitment of the Museum of Arts and Design to present jewelry as an art form. MAD is the only American museum to possess a gallery dedicated to the display of both temporary jewelry exhibits and its own collection of contemporary and modern studio and art jewelry, which it began assembling soon after its founding in 1956.

To date, LOOT has showcased famous jewelry artists like Eva Eisler, Robert Lee Morris and Kara Ross along with newer names—thus becoming an important platform to launch the careers of many young, cutting-edge creators from around the globe. In 2012, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Japan, and Tasmania were just some of the countries represented in the diverse roster of featured artists.  This year’s participating LOOT artists and LOOT Award recipient will be announced in the spring.

Proceeds from the selling show benefit the Museum's exhibition and education programs.

Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital
October 14, 2013 – June 1, 2014

Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital will explore the many areas of 21st-century creativity made possible by advanced methods of computer-assisted production known as digital fabrication. In today’s postdigital world, artists are using these means to achieve levels of expression never before possible – an explosive, unprecedented scope of artistic expression that extends from sculptural fantasy to functional beauty. Out of Hand will be the first major museum exhibition to examine this interdisciplinary trend through the pioneering works of more than 80 international artists, architects, and designers, including Ron Arad, Barry X Ball, Zaha Hadid, Stephen Jones, Anish Kapoor, Allan McCollum, Marc Newson, and Roxy Paine. Represented will be some of the most compelling creations from the past decade ranging from sculpture and furniture to fashion and transport.

It will be the first museum show to consider the impact of these new, revolutionary methods of computer-assisted manufacture on fine art, design, and architecture, and will introduce the public to the imaginative expression that these emerging processes enable. Through this exhibition, MAD will explore a monumental transition in the way human beings define creation through these individual makers who utilize the tools of technological innovation.

Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital is organized by Ronald T. Labaco, Marcia Docter Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design.

ONGOING EXHIBITIONS

Doris Duke’s Shangri-La: Architecture, Landscape, and Islamic Art
Through February 17, 2013 

Exploring the extraordinary dialogue between Islamic tradition and Western modernity that shaped the fabled Honolulu residence of the philanthropist Doris Duke, Doris Duke’s Shangri La: Architecture, Landscape, and Islamic Art features large-scale newly commissioned photos of the five-acre property by Tim Street-Porter and archival materials on the travel and research that led to the creation of Duke’s home and growth of her collection over 60 years, in addition to a selection of works from her collection, never before seen outside her home-ceramics, furniture, textiles, and jewelry inlaid with precious gems from Spain, North Africa, Central and South Asia, and the Middle East, including objects dating from the early first millennium B.C..–along with new works by six contemporary artists of Islamic heritage who participated in Shangri-La’s Contemporary Artists Residency program.

Organized by guest curators Donald Albrecht and Tom Mellins in collaboration with the Doris Duke Foundation. Following its debut presentation at MAD, the exhibition will travel to the Norton Museum of Art, Nasher Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Nevada Museum of Art, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, and the Honolulu Academy of the Arts.

Doris Duke’s Shangri-La: Architecture, Landscape, and Islamic Art is organized by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art.

Daniel Brush: Blue Steel Gold Light
Through February 24, 2013

The first comprehensive survey on the astonishing range of Daniel Brush’s artistic production, Daniel Brush: Blue Steel Gold Light features the artist’s large-scale paintings, early granulated jewels and objects, a selection of his most significant steel and gold tablets and wall sculptures, and structural jewelry made from plastic, aluminum, steel, and precious gems. The exhibition, the first to present Brush’s work as a holistic experience across many media, focuses on the material diversity of Brush’s output and the innovative, and often times arduous, techniques he employs.

Spanning 40 years, Daniel Brush: Blue Steel Gold Light is as much about Brush’s final artworks as the stages of study, contemplation, and production that are inherent to his process. The exhibition sheds new light on Brush as a man, and his art as an extension of his mind and varied and numerous interests.

Daniel Brush: Blue Steel Gold Light is organized by David McFadden, William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design.

Daniel Brush: Blue Steel Gold Light is made possible through the generous support of Siegelson, New York, with additional support from Christie's, Van Cleef & Arpels, Fiona and Stanley Druckenmiller, an anonymous collector, and a group of private collectors.

The Art of Scent, 1889-2012
Through March 3, 2013

The Art of Scent is the first museum exhibition dedicated to exploring the design and aesthetics of olfactory art through twelve pivotal fragrances whose impact has evolved this artistic medium. The exhibition will examine major stylistic developments in the evolution and design of fragrance, and provide unprecedented insight into the creative visions and intricate processes of the artists responsible for crafting the featured works. The scents will be experiences individually in a special installation designed by Elizabeth Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro that emphasizes the distinct combination of chemistry and artistry entailed in their creation.

Organized by MAD’s Curator of Olfactory Art Chandler Burr, The Art of Scent explores the progression of olfactory art, beginning in the late nineteenth century-when the transition from the use of raw materials by synthetic molecules ushered in the modern era of fragrances-through the present day. The exhibition features Aimé Guerlain’s Jicky, (1889), Olivier Cresp’s Angel, (1992), Annie Buzantian and Alberto Morillas’s Pleasures, (1995), and Daniela Andrier’s Untitled, (2010), among other significant works of olfactory art.

The Art of Scent is made possible by The Estée Lauder Companies—a Founding Major Donor—and other Major Donors, including Chanel, Inc., Givaudan, Hermès Parfums, International Flavors & Fragrances Inc, L'Oréal and P&G Prestige. Additional support for The Art of Scent is provided by Funders Arcade Marketing USA and Guerlain, as well as Diptyque and Women in Flavor and Fragrance Commerce Inc.

Playing with Fire: 50 Years of Contemporary Glass
Through August 25, 2013

 Glass has long been revered for its beauty, and prized for its particular powers of transparency and reflection. In the past 50 years, ever since a legendary workshop by Harvey Littleton first presented glassblowing as a possibility for individual artists, it has been used by artists and designers who continually experiment to take the material in new directions. This exhibition showcases the astonishing range of works that use glass, from pieces by early adaptors such as Dale Chihuly, who entered MAD’s collection when he was still an emerging artist, to installations by Israeli designer Ayala Serfaty, who creates clouds of light with innovative processes. Also included are pieces by artists and designers not commonly known for their work in glass, such as James Turrell, Donald Lipski, and Ettore Sottsass.

Drawing on MAD’s focus on materials and process, the exhibition themes explore the extraordinary qualities of glass as an artistic material, as well as the array of techniques, both traditional and newly developed, used by glass artists and designers. Interactive media, including interviews with the artists and videos showing the pieces being made, provide a “behind the scenes” look at the creative process. The exhibition is organized by Jennifer Scanlan, Associate Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design.

Playing With Fire: 50 Years of Contemporary Glass is made possible, in part, by the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM OF ARTS AND DESIGN

The Museum of Arts and Design explores the intersection between art, design, and craft today. It focuses on contemporary creativity and the ways in which artists and designers from around the world transform materials through processes ranging from the artisanal to the digital. The Museum’s exhibition program examines and illuminates issues and ideas, highlights invention and craftsmanship, and celebrates the limitless potential of materials and techniques when used by gifted and innovative artists. MAD’s permanent collection is global in scope and focuses on art, craft, and design from 1950 to the present day. Central to its mission is education. Its dynamic new facility features classrooms and studios for master classes, seminars, and workshops for students, families, and adults. Its Open Studios enable visitors to engage artists at work and further enhance exhibition programs. Lectures, films, performances, and symposia related to the Museum’s collection and topical subjects affecting the world of contemporary art, craft, and design are held in MAD’s 144-seat theater.

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