EXHIBITS
Scandinavian Design and the United States: Cultural Exchanges From 1890–1980
BY MONICA OBNISKI AND BOBBYE TIGERMAN
Scandinavian design has become so intertwined into US culture over the years that it is difficult to determine where Scandinavian design ends and American design begins.
Hear Me Now: The Met’s Landmark Exhibition of Ceramics from the Edgefield District
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s landmark exhibition “Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina” focuses on the work of African American potters in the 19th-century American South, in dialogue with contemporary artistic responses.
Crafting Freedom: The Life and Legacy of Free Black Potter Thomas W. Commeraw
BY MARGI HOFER AND ALLISON ROBINSON
The New-York Historical Society has organized the first exhibition devoted to the life and work of Thomas W. Commeraw, a Manhattan stoneware potter whose racial identity and remarkable story were long lost to history.
Factory of Illusions: Researching and Reconstructing an Art Deco Bedroom by Joseph Urban
BY TALIA SHIROMA
The Cincinnati Art Museum displays an exhibition based on Joseph Urban’s late-1920s commission for Leo F. and Helen Wormser of Chicago, a bedroom for their daughter Elaine.
MESDA’s House Party Exhibition
BY MICHAEL J. BRAMWELL
MESDA’s House Party: R.S.V.P. B.Y.O.B. exhibition engages critically with inequities of power and violence that continue as material and cultural legacies within American decorative arts.
“Borderlands” at The Huntington
BY DENNIS CARR AND YINSHI LERMAN-TAN
Trust members visited the new installation, “Borderlands,” at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in December 2021.
Grinling Gibbons 300: Carving a Place in History
BY HANNAH PHILLIP
The Grinling Gibbons Society was formed in 2020 to masterplan the tercentenary festival Grinling Gibbons 300: Carving a Place in History (August 2021–August 2022).
Delicately Carved, Seductively Glazed: Gifts from the Fire Opens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
BY JULIANA FAGUA ARIAS
Gifts from the Fire highlights the extraordinary diversity and impressive accomplishments of American potteries and ceramicists working from the late 19th century to World War II.
Fifty Years of Gio Ponti at the Denver Art Museum
BY TARYN CLARY
In 1965, the Denver Art Museum (DAM) approached Gio Ponti to create a new structure for its growing collections. Then 74 years old, the Italian architect had firmly established himself as a master of Modernism across the globe and across disciplines.
The Mozart of Metal: Dan Nauman on 19th-Century Blacksmith Cyril Colnik
BY JOHN-DUANE KINGSLEY
Nestled in the heart of Milwaukee, WI, is the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum, home to the Cyril Colnik collection of decorative ironwork. Revered as a master craftsman, Colnik’s workshop created thousands of public and private commissions across Milwaukee that act as a tribute to the city’s strong Germanic origins.