The New York Times agrees with me:

Happily, institutions and individuals are deciding to throw out the old debates about the relative values of art designated fine, folk, high or utilitarian. The point is to understand each tradition. The point is to open one’s eyes to any artist who, as Joseph Conrad said, can make us hear, feel and above all see. Margo Jefferson, Beyond Cultural Labeling, Beyond Art Versus Craft

The Whitney Museum of American Art has an upcoming exhibit that will primarily feature items from the museum’s own collection. Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 will feature over eighty works. Items in the exhibit include weaving, bead-making, sewing, and pottery. Experiments with a wide variety of mediums will be represented.

This exhibition provides new perspectives on subjects that have been central to artists, including abstraction, popular culture, feminist and queer aesthetics, and recent explorations of identity and relationships to place. Together, the works demonstrate that craft-informed techniques of making carry their own kind of knowledge, one that is crucial to a more complete understanding of the history and potential of art. Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney has a history of treating items classified as Folk Art as High Art.

The Whitney Museum’s celebrated show “The Quilts of Gee’s Bend” (2002–3) was a turning point. Here were women from a small, isolated black community in Alabama who had been making quilts for generations. Certain formal qualities united their work. But as with any significant school, gifted individuals had found their own styles. Their experiments could be tracked; their artistic ambition was clear. Margo Jefferson, Beyond Cultural Labeling, Beyond Art Versus Craft

Craft or Folk Art Museums

There are museums set aside for items classified in the public mind as craft, of course. Some have interesting projects coming up soon.

The Museum of Craft and Design (MCD) in San Francisco, CA always has something interesting to see. Currently, the exhibition Interior/Exterior has my attention. It examines public and private space and how they interact and overlap. It features installations and sculptures by a variety of artists.

The Fuller Craft Museum has Striking Gold: Fuller at Fifty show opening on September 7, 2019.

This invitational project will explore the storied traditions, contemporary interpretations, skillful applications, and conceptual rigor of gold as an artistic material, while investigating the multitude of cultural, material, and sociopolitical associations. For the 57 selected artists, gold remains central to their work as they delve far deeper than embellishment or decorative effect.

The Museum of Glass, located in Tacoma, WA, has a show opening in October that sounds amazing. Transparency: An LGBTQ+ Glass Art Exhibition was created by the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia, PA in 2017 to celebrate Pride Month.

Now, the National Liberty Museum is partnering with Museum of Glass, Tacoma, Washington to share this exhibition with a broader audience and showcase the diverse subjects, methods, and styles explored by LGBTQ+ glass artists. Many of the selected works were created for this exhibition, and the result is a three-dimensional meditation on queer experience that is as multifaceted as the community from which it comes. Transparency: An LGBTQ+ Glass Art Exhibition

Even my own area has gotten into the act. While researching this article for upcoming exhibitions, I found information on an annual local event.

The Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum will be holding their 40th Annual Contemporary Crafts exhibition beginning February 8, 2020.

Representative of traditional craft mediums including ceramics, fibers, basketry, metals, wood, glass, jewelry, paper marking and book arts, this exhibition showcases 53 artworks by 50 artists, representing 13 states. 40th Annual Contemporary Crafts

There may be room in the business of art for strict beliefs about the difference between High Art and craft. There shouldn’t be in the appreciation of it. A person can see the beauty and art of Maria Callas and still appreciate the artistry of Kurt Cobain’s voice.

Or maybe that’s just me.

Glass on glass mosaic of Maxine, a cat. Art and photo by Shelly McIntosh

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