November Openings

Craft in America
Streaming online in November 2022 at PBS and Craft in America
Broadcast on local PBS stations on December 16, 2022

With two new episodes, PBS launches the 14th season of its venerable program Craft in America, which tells the stories of craft and artists in every part of the country. Released simultaneously, the “Home” episode “visits artists whose environments are filled with meaning and metaphor” while the “Inspiration” episode “reveals the magic and influence of craft.” The collection of craft artists included in these episodes is impressive. Tune in to find out more.

Vessel: Embodiment, Autonomy, and Ornament in Wood
The Center for Art in Wood, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
November 4, 2022–February 12, 2023

The vessel, a primary craft form, is a bearer of physical things. But at the same time, say the organizers of this show, “the idea of the vessel has been used to explain the secrets of the universe.” Here 15 prominent artists contribute examples of this resonant form, and the Center adds works from its permanent collection.

Scott Albrecht: Holding Time
Hashimoto Contemporary, San Francisco, California
November 5–26, 2022

This exhibition is the third solo show at the Hashimoto gallery by the Brooklyn-based Albrecht, who is best known for his colorful cut, painted, and assembled wood pieces. The artist will present over a dozen new wood relief and sculptural works.

Joanne Jaffe: Ceramics: Ruly & Unruly
Lois Lambert Gallery, Santa Monica, California
November 12, 2022–January 7, 2023

When COVID struck, Jaffe became, in her words, “food-obsessed.” While her husband took up baking, she plunged into making dinnerware. This exhibition shows off the colorful, oxidation-fired results, from sake sets to dinner plates and beyond. The whimsically shaped pieces in a wall-mounted installation called the Solar System series can double as hors d’oeuvre plates.

Nick Cave: Forothermore
Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York
November 18, 2022–April 10, 2023

Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, this comprehensive survey of Cave’s career showcases an artist celebrated for his textile works and installations that foreground marginalized—particularly queer—people of color. Cave’s many influences, including the flamboyant musical collective Parliament-Funkadelic, will be on full display.

Design Miami
Miami Beach, Florida
November 30–December 4, 2022

Curator Maria Cristina Dider chose the theme “The Golden Age: Looking to the Future” for the 18th iteration of this international collectible design exposition. Running concurrently with Art Basel Miami Beach, Design Miami features 50 galleries with a focus on contemporary and historical furniture, lighting, and objets d’art. R & Company will present Roberto Lugo’s web-based project The Village Potter in physical form, as a bodega with new objects nestled among his better-known ceramic forms.

December Openings

CraftForms 2022, 27th International Juried Exhibition of Contemporary Fine Craft
Wayne Art Center, Wayne, Pennsylvania
December 2, 2022–January 21, 2023

New York–based independent curator Jeannine Falino selected the winners in this show, for which works in basketry, ceramics, decorative fiber, furniture, glass, jewelry, metal, mixed media, paper, wearable art, and wood were eligible, as was work created with CAD/CAM technologies and 3D printers.

VisionMakers2022
108 Contemporary, Tulsa, Oklahoma
December 2, 2022–January 22, 2023

This forward-looking biennial exhibition of juried work by fine craft artists in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico, and Texas bills itself as a “bridge [between] cutting-edge concepts and traditional skills.” Works in ceramics, glass, fiber, jewelry and metals, wood, and other media explore—and cross—the boundaries of art, craft, and design.

The Global Language of Headwear: Cultural Identity, Rites of Passage & Spirituality
Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin
December 3, 2022–February 26, 2023

The headwear in this show, drawn from 43 countries, ranges from wedding veils to crowns to Indigenous headdresses and beyond. It’s a rich portrait of how the world’s people display power, status, identity, and spirituality on their heads.

Social Fabric: Textiles and Contemporary Issues
Newport Art Museum, Newport, Rhode Island
December 3, 2022–June 11, 2023

“What people make to clothe, protect, and decorate themselves and their spaces tells us about their cultures, eras, identities, families, and lives,” say the organizers of this show. The significance of fabric in life has led the artists on display here to use it to explore issues such as climate change, war, social justice, and racial and gender identity.

Guillermo del Toro: Crafting Pinocchio
Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
December 11, 2022–April 15, 2023

Scheduled to coincide with the premiere of the lauded director’s new animated version of the classic story of the wooden boy, this exhibition combines various interpretations of Pinocchio from around the world with production art, props, working sets from the film, and video installation documenting its stop-motion animation process.

January Openings

Figuring Space
The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
January 12–April 16, 2023

The 12 life-size clay sculptures of human figures in this show are the work of a dozen artists from around the country, all of whom use the figure to declare their personal, racial, and ethnic identities—and to both celebrate diversity and call attention to how social injustice and historical trauma leave traces on the human body.

Creative Alloys: The Boston Metals Scene
Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts
January 28–June 4, 2023

Organized in conjunction with Fuller’s exhibition Daniel Jocz: Permission Granted, which highlights the work of this lauded Cambridge, Massachusetts, metalsmith, Creative Alloys displays work by a dozen metal and jewelry artists in Boston. These “creative allies” have formed what the organizers call an “ecosystem,” making the city a major hub for the craft.

La Cartonería Mexicana / The Mexican Art of Paper and Paste
Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico
January 29, 2023–June 30, 2024

Using paste, cardboard, paper, and other simple materials, cartonería artists craft piñatas, dolls, Day of the Dead skeletons, and fantasy animals called alebrijes. More than 100 sculptures from the museum’s permanent collection will be on display in this celebration of a living tradition with deep historical roots.

February Openings

Fluidity: Identity in Swedish Glass
American Swedish Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota
February 1–May 28, 2023

This gathering of works by lesser-known contemporary glass artists from Sweden and the American Midwest, including pieces by women artists in the Institute’s collection, “celebrates the achievements of undertold and unheard voices.” A highlight will be an installation by Swedish American artist Jo Andersson that augments glass with light, liquid, and sound.

Anne Lindberg: what color is divine light?
The Textile Museum, Washington, DC
February 4–July 1, 2023

The light in the title of this exhibition is created when physical light merges with the myriad threads in Lindberg’s installations, producing luminous spaces for meditation and reflection on self, community, and the divine. “A series of programs within the gallery,” the organizers say, “will bring community members together for shared experiences designed to foster understanding and transcendence.”

Hangama Amiri
Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut
February 5–June 11, 2023

Combining textile collage with painting and printmaking, Afghan Canadian émigré artist Amiri crafts intensely colorful works evoking domestic interiors and shops in the market districts of Kabul, the war-torn city her family fled in 1996. Centered on the lives of women as homemakers and entrepreneurs, her works vividly evoke female struggles for livelihood and liberation.

Out of Joint
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California
February 12–May 14, 2023

The room-filling sculptural assemblages of Santa Barbara–based artist Joan Tanner are made out of the least promising of mass-produced materials, including plastic corrugated roofing sheets, rebar, zip ties, drywall, C-clamps, safety netting, and plywood. In this show, her brilliantly hued, flamboyant, nearly-but-not-quite-chaotic sculptures will share space with recent abstract drawings.

Kahlil Robert Irving
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
February 16–October 15, 2023

Irving’s dense, colorful, funky assemblages are made of ceramic replicas of everyday objects, ceramic fragments, and embedded found objects and images. This sophisticated, highly finished “junk sculpture” suggests an archaeology of moments in history, the worlds of individual people, and contemporary ways of Black life. On view will be new work, including several pieces commissioned by the Walker.

Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest
Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York, New York
February 17–July 9, 2023

This combined gallery and online exhibition will showcase Indigenous textiles from the American Southwest in a dynamic manner that breaks with the traditional, static museum protocols of period, design, and style. Instead, local knowledge, continuing development, market realities, and Native agency and voice will be emphasized, along with comparisons of Navajo textiles with Pueblo and Hispanic weaving traditions.