A recent comment on the “Making It Real” blog was “What is the Making it Real exhibition about and when will it take place?” The short answer is: Making it Real will be at MAD from October 12, 2011, until January 15, 2012, and will look at the emergence of the American Studio Craft Movement in the period after World War II. But that begs the question—what was the studio craft movement? So today’s blog is a (short, I promise) history lesson about how and why crafts went from being a necessity to being a choice. Along the way, I will also explain how we came up with the title.
The church (and by “church” I mean all religious groups) has historically been an important patron of the arts, and we found that this was especially true in the postwar period when many new churches and synagogues were built. So, we are including a section in Making it Real of “Craft in the Service of Worship.”
As we prepare our show, we are often struck by the impressive personal stories of the artists we are planning to include. With this in mind, we wanted to share a bit about fiber artist Lenore Tawney.
I had the chance to visit Paul’s studio with MAD chief curator David McFadden a few weeks back to talk to him about his background, about his work and about his process. This video is the result:
His piece for our Second Lives exhibition is going to be really cool. I highly recommend coming to see it, if for no other reason than to see what records from his collection he chose to destroy for the sake of his art.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to record Paul talking about some of his other creations, like the FEMA trailer / artist studio discussed in the LA Times article, or the giant turbine behind him in this video (an installation piece – the giant fan spins on the outside of an exhibit space to power a tiny fan on the inside), or what I suspect might have been some sort of homemade jetpack which you can just make out over Paul’s left shoulder….
The LA Times published a story on Paul Villinski today, who is one of the featured artists in Second Lives – an opening exhibition at MAD’S new home on Columbus Circle for the fall 2008. Our new press person, Heidi Riegler, thought it would be interesting for our blog readers to see. Some of you may remember Paul’s haunting work in the Extreme Embroidery exhibition this past winter – the wings created from discarded gloves, titled Lament from 2001-2006 which the article refers to.
Better late than never, here’s a nice video to complement Elayne’s post on deinstallation of the 40 West 53rd Street galleries. In this clip, our art handlers are removing Annet Couwenberg’s “Embroidery Penetrates” from the wall of the gallery.
Thanks to Skip La Plante for allowing us to use his music – for those who don’t know Skip’s music, he composes and performs his music on homemade music built from trash (the particular instrument here is a kind of homemade zither called the Kanon). And kudos to Elayne for some excellent narration.
Last week was the deinstallation of our final exhibition at our 53rd Street address. As with installations, the close of exhibitions requires much time spent organizing schedules, wrangling packing materials, talking with artists and lenders, scheduling shipments, and very careful art handling.
Josh will soon post a video clip that will show the deinstallation of one of the “Pricked” artworks, Annet Couwenberg’s Embroidery Penetrates. As you will see, the art handlers take great precaution in protecting this artwork during take down and movement.
The A level gallery with some deinstallation debris.
I got a chance to go to visit one of the conservators MAD is working with to prepare our permanent collection for exhibition at our new museum at 2 Columbus Circle. A short video is up on YouTube, and I’ll be posting an audio-only version shortly.
The piece is Robert Arneson’s Alice House Wall, which is a large (approx. 5′ x 8′) mural composed of 39 individual ceramic bricks. The piece will be exhibited at our new museum for the first time in about 20 years.
The A level gallery with some deinstallation debris.
