We went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to see couple of new craft exhibitions – on jewelry and fiber. Instead we spent all the time at just opened Shy Boy, She Devil, And Isis, Conceptual Craft from Wornick Collection. More than 100 objects, mostly three dimensional with some wall art. Wood pieces were especially eye opening… No wonder – it occurs that Wornicks were initially collecting what they would call "sculptural wood vessels" (the interview and some wood works from their collection are available at youtube here).
Art Knowledge News has some pictures and an excellent description of the exhibition (not so much so on the MFA site itself).
Couldn’t resist getting the exhibition catalog – besides excellent photos of all presented objects it contains essays on several interesting subjects – craft vs art, the materialization of arts, the role of private collectors…
And i keep thinking that exhibitions like this seriously raise the bar for craft artists: it’s hard not to measure works we will encounter on the next arts and craft fair we visit against it.
