Exhibiting Craft And Design

Exhibiting Craft and Design: Transgressing the White Cube Paradigm, 1930–present investigates the ways that craft and design objects were collected, displayed, and interpreted throughout the second half of the twentieth century and in recent years. The case studies discussed in this volume explain the notion the neutral display space had worked with, challenged, distorted, or assisted in conveying the ideas of the exhibitions in question. In various ways the essays included in this volume analyse and investigate strategies to facilitate interaction amongst craft and design objects, their audiences, exhibiting bodies, and the makers. Using both historical examples from the middle of the twentieth century and contemporary trends, the authors create a dialogue that investigates the different uses of and challenges to the White Cube paradigm of space organization.

From the aesthetics of postwar reconstruction to the functional objects that complemented 1950s West Coast Modern architecture and the expressive material forms of the 1960s and 70s, Modern in the Making will acknowledge the many dimensions that defined British Columbia's cultural identity in the postwar era. It is the first volume to trace the evolution of Modern ceramics, weaving and fiber art, furniture, fashion and jewelry design produced between 1945 and 1975 in the Vancouver Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island and the Okanagan.

This comprehensive survey of contemporary design in Latin America explores collaborations between small manufacturing operations and artists, designers, and craftspeople, demonstrating how the resulting work addresses issues of commodification, production, urbanisation, displacement, and sustainability. It is organised around various cities and the main themes pursued by more than 100 artists, design studios, and artisans in regions such as Brazil, Cuba, Panama, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Colombia, and Chile. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museum of Art and Design in New York, it is richly illustrated and includes essays by critics, curators, and art historians. 00Exhibition: Museum of Arts and Design, New York, USA (04.11.2014-06.04.2015).

Leading Canadian artists, curators, and art historians from Douglas Coupland to Paul Bourassa look at questions of design and national identity in the 1960s.

Throughout the 21st century, various craft practices have drawn the attention of academics and the general public in the West. In Craft is Political, D Wood has gathered a collection of essays to argue that this attention is a direct response to and critique of the particular economic, social and technological contexts in which we live. Just as Ruskin and Morris viewed craft and its ethos in the 1800s as a kind of political opposition to the Industrial Revolution, Wood and her authors contend that current craft activities are politically saturated when perspectives from the Global South, Indigenous ideology and even Western government policy are examined. Craft is Political argues that a holistic perspective on craft, in light of colonialism, post-colonialism, critical race theory and globalisation, is overdue. A great diversity of case studies is included, from craft and design in Turkey and craft markets in New Zealand to Indigenous practitioners in Taiwan and Finnish craft education. Craft is Political brings together authors from a variety of disciplines and nations to consider politicised craft.

Contemporary craft, art and design are inseparable from the flows of production and consumption under global capitalism. The New Politics of the Handmade features twenty-three voices who critically rethink the handmade in this dramatically shifting economy. The authors examine craft within the conditions of extreme material and economic disparity; a renewed focus on labour and materiality in contemporary art and museums; the political dimensions of craftivism, neoliberalism, and state power; efforts toward urban renewal and sustainability; the use of digital technologies; and craft's connections to race, cultural identity and sovereignty in texts that criss-cross five continents. They claim contemporary craft as a dynamic critical position for understanding the most immediate political and aesthetic issues of our time.