NEW YORK– Marking the Museum of Arts and Design's first year under the leadership of its new Nanette L. Laitman Director Glenn Adamson, the upcoming 2014–2015 exhibition programming reflects MAD's commitment to championing skilled makers—artists, designers, and artisans—and the value they bring to the world around us. Featuring work from throughout the five boroughs and across the globe, the exhibitions will transform the Museum into a creative hub and platform for the 21st century maker.
Bringing together key works from MAD's permanent collection, Re: Collection will celebrate recently retired Chief Curator David McFadden's sixteen years of curatorial choices with objects acquired during his tenure that provide insight into the creative process. Later this spring, the exhibition Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography will feature over 80 international jewelry artists whose work transforms and adds new meaning to the pervasive images of this digital age.
In the summer, MAD will become a platform for present-day skilled craftsmanship through the inaugural NYC Makers Open exhibition, which will spotlight New York City's highly-skilled, innovative, collaborative and cross-disciplinary creative community. Finally this fall, New Territories: Laboratories for Design, Craft, and Art in Latin America will investigate contemporary developments in design and craft in the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking communities of South and Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico. It will focus on individuals and collaboratives that exemplify laboratories where some of the most pertinent new directions in design and craft are emerging today.
Re: Collection
April 1, 2014 to September 7, 2014
MAD celebrates the fifth anniversary of its move to 2 Columbus Circle with the special exhibition Re: Collection, on view from April 1 to September 7, 2014. The exhibition will survey Chief Curator David McFadden's sixteen years at MAD through objects acquired during his tenure. Under McFadden's curatorial leadership, the permanent collection has grown from 800 objects to more than 3,000; In the past five years alone, since MAD's move to 2 Columbus Circle, approximately 730 objects that exemplify the imaginative transformation of materials have been added to the collection.
Working in coordination with curator Ron Labaco and exhibitions curator Dorothy Globus, McFadden has selected approximately 75 works of sculpture, jewelry, ceramics, furniture, and textiles, many of which are definitive works by key postwar American and international makers. The selection will range broadly, from well-known figures such as Ron Arad, Robert Arneson, Judy Chicago, Mary A. Jackson, and Kim Schmahmann, to cutting-edge makers like Sebastian Brajkovic and Ayala Serfaty, among many others.
Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography
May 13, 2014 to September 14, 2014
Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography is the first museum exhibition to explore how contemporary jewelry artists transform and add new meaning to the pervasive images of this digital age. Drawing inspiration from historic daguerreotypes to manipulated digital images, international jewelry artists explore changing views of beauty and the human body; examine social, political, and cultural issues; probe perceptions of memory and desire; and question the broader relation of jewelry to society and personal identity, issues central to the contemporary experience.
More than 80 renowned artists from over 20 countries are represented—including Gijs Bakker, Wafaa Bilal, Jordan Doner, Mari Ishikawa, Jiro Kamata, Sooyeon Kim, Iris Nieuwenburg, Kara Ross, Gabriela Sanchez, Bernhard Schobinger, Bettina Speckner, Joyce Scott, Kiff Slemmons, Andy Warhol and Noa Zilberman.
The connection between photography and jewelry extends back more than 150 years to the invention of the photographic process. The exhibition will provide historical context for this evolving relationship by presenting outstanding nineteenth-century pieces, many of which have never before been exhibited.
Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Ursula Ilse-Neuman, MAD's Acting Chief Curator Lowery Stokes Sims, Dutch author and jewelry curator Liesbeth den Besten, photography expert Mark Durant, Curator of Decorative Arts at the Toledo Museum of Art Jutta Page, American author and Metalsmith editor Suzanne Ramljak, photography historian and critic Lyle Rexer and German author and critic Ellen Maurer Zillioli.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a full range of educational programming, including lectures and panels for adults, workshops for young visitors and families, in-house demonstrations of jewelry making, curator-led tours of the exhibition, and a variety of film screenings.
NYC Makers Open
July 1, 2014 to October 12, 2014
In July 2014, the Museum of Arts and Design will inaugurate NYC Makers Open, an exhibition that spotlights the creative communities thriving across the five boroughs today. The first exhibition to be organized under the leadership of MAD's new Director Glenn Adamson, NYC Makers Open will showcase the work of approximately 100 makers—highly inventive artisans, artists, and designers who create objects or environments through exquisite workmanship and skill. Exemplifying the Museum's ongoing commitment to craftsmanship across all creative fields, the exhibition will serve as a platform not only for makers who typically display their work in a museum setting, but also those who operate behind the scenes.
The exhibition will be structured as a series of immersive tableaus that present the diverse creative output of makers alongside one another. These environments will house live programs throughout the exhibition's run, including fashion shows, performances, social practice projects, and culinary explorations, which will underline the relationship between material and immaterial making found in New York City today. Through this approach, NYC Makers Open will transform MAD into a production studio that links creative, innovative, and skillful makers into one immense collaborative undertaking: an undertaking that manifests the cultural capital of New York.
LOOT: MAD About Jewelry
October 6–10, 2014
Now, in its 14th year, LOOT: MAD About Jewelry, MAD's juried selling exhibition of artist-made jewelry, has earned the reputation of being the ultimate pop-up shop for contemporary art and studio jewelry by both artists and collectors alike. LOOT will feature a range of work, including inventive pieces in gold, sterling silver, and semiprecious stones alongside jewelry made of unexpected materials such as titanium, stainless steel, glass, wood, rubber, fabric, and found objects. Unlike any other jewelry event in the country, LOOT gives jewelry lovers the opportunity to meet some of the most innovative creators in the field and acquire work directly from them.
To date, LOOT has showcased famous jewelry artists like Eva Eisler, Robert Lee Morris and Kara Ross along with newer names—thus becoming an important platform to launch the careers of many young, cutting-edge creators from around the globe.
This year's participating LOOT artists and LOOT Award recipient will be announced in the spring.
New Territories: Laboratories for Design, Craft, and Art in Latin America
November 4, 2014–March 2, 2015
The term "new territories," as evoked by Italian architect and designer Gaetano Pesce, refers to the state of making in today's globalized society, a phenomenon that has helped to spur a confluence of art, design, and craft. The exhibition New Territories: Laboratories for Design, Craft, and Art in Latin America will examine this trend in several distinct cities throughout Latin America, where some of the most pertinent new directions in arts and design are emerging today.
New Territories explores the collaborations between small manufacturing operations and craftspersons, artists, and designers, and demonstrates how the resulting work addresses not only the issues of commodification and production, but also of urbanization, displacement, and sustainability. The exhibition will explore a number of key themes, including: the dialogue between contemporary trends and artistic legacies in Latin American art; the use of recycled and repurposed materials and objects; the blending of digital and traditional skills; and the reclamation of personal and public space.
Below is also a listing of ongoing MAD exhibitions:
Body & Soul: New International Ceramics
Through March 2, 2014
Fashion Jewelry: The Collection of Barbara Berger
Through April 20, 2014
Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital
Through June 1, 2014
