school of the art institute of chicago

Looking for Craft in All the Wrong Archives

Fiber and Material Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Link: Visiting Artist Lecture

Wednesday, November 29, 2017, 4:15 p.m.

Sharp Building, 37 S. Wabash Ave., room 327
"In 2014, I received word that Monograph Bookwerks in Portland, OR had purchased publications from the estate of Hattie Mae and Max Nixon, influential educators who taught generations of students at University of Oregon. A day spent poring through boxes of publications, leaflets, pamphlets, newsletters, and magazines revealed historic shifts in textile history from the 1930s to the 1990s, and raised a number of questions to be explored in this talk. What do the books owned by educators who taught ceramics, metal, and textile histories and processes reveal about shifts in craft history? What are the effects of the shifts of knowledge centers from gendered home economics courses to ostensibly gender-neutral material science and art? Where—and what—constitutes the archive of modern craft?"

*This lecture series is made possible by the William Bronson and Grayce Slovet Mitchell Lectureship in Fiber and Material Studies