The Sound and the Fury: On Craft and Sculpture in America

In recent years, craft has come roaring into focus in contemporary sculpture. Mediums that had once been firmly marginalized in fine art circles - ceramics and textiles particularly - are now front and center. Glenn Adamson will offer a personal perspective on this shift, drawing on his thirty years of work on craft theory and history.

One of the most persistent stereotypes about craft is that it is traditional: a means of connecting to the past, defined by continuity rather than innovation. In fact, this is a false opposition: to preserve a tradition successfully often requires constant invention, while the development of new ideas (particularly in a process-intensive creative context) invariably relies on accumulated knowledge. In this first talk, Adamson will take us to the 1950s and 1960s, and to three figures working in three different media: Lenore Tawney, in fiber; Toshiko Takaezu, in ceramics; and Harry Bertoia, in metalwork. He will trace unexpected connections between these apparently disparate figures, focusing on the presence of sound and kinetic elements in their work as a particularly compelling leitmotif. The talk will conclude with a look ahead to the second lecture, and discussion of contemporary artists who are integrating sound and other forms of action into crafted sculpture. 

About Glenn Adamson

Glenn Adamson is a curator, writer and historian based in New York. He has previously been Director of the Museum of Arts and Design and Head of Research at the V&A. Dr. Adamson’s publications include Thinking Through Craft (2007); The Craft Reader (2010); Postmodernism: Style and Subversion (2011, accompanying the exhibition of that title at the V&A, co-curated with Jane Pavitt); The Invention of Craft (2013); Art in the Making (2016, co-authored with Julia Bryan-Wilson; Fewer Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects (2018); Objects: USA 2020; and Craft: An American History (2021).  

Dr. Adamson is Artistic Director for Design Doha, a new biennial festival for Qatar (forthcoming in 2024), editor of Material Intelligence, a quarterly journal published by the Chipstone Foundation, and host of Design in Dialogue, an ongoing online interview series in collaboration with Friedman Benda. His current curatorial projects include Mirror Mirror: Reflections on Design at Chatsworth (2023) and Toshiko Takaezu: Garden of Forms at the Isamu Noguchi Museum (forthcoming in 2024, and touring nationally thereafter).