CAUCUS MEMBER EVENT

CAUCUS MEMBER AFTERNOON OF LEARNING
​Featuring glenn adamson WITH abraham thomas
​SUNDAY, May 16 | 2PM
$25 per household | ONLINE ZOOM EVENT
**caucus and sponsor members only**

​A double billing: In an interview format, Abraham Thomas talks with Glenn Adamson about Adamson’s newly published book Craft: An American History and the current exhibition Crafting America at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art which opened February 6 and closes May 31, 2021.
 
Craft: An American History is a groundbreaking and endlessly surprising history of how artisans created America, from the nation's origins to the present day.

Crafting America is an exhibition featuring over 100 works in ceramics, fiber, wood, metal, glass, and more unexpected materials that presents a diverse and inclusive story of American craft from the 1940s to today, highlighting the work of artists such as Ruth Asawa, Peter Voulkos, Jeffrey Gibson, Sonya Clark, and more. Developed by Glenn Adamson, guest curator and scholar of craft, design history, and contemporary art, and Jen Padgett, associate curator at Crystal Bridges, Crafting America asserts craft’s integral role in expanding the story of American art. 
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​Glenn Adamson

​Glenn Adamson and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art are no strangers to JRACraft members, having spoken to our Caucus members in June 2015, followed by a visit of JRACraft members to the museum in September 2015.

Adamson is a curator and writer who works at the intersection of craft, design history and contemporary art. He has previously been Director of the Museum of Arts and Design; Head of Research at the V&A; and Curator at the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee. Adamson’s publications include Fewer Better Things (2019); Art in the Making (2016, co-authored with Julia Bryan-Wilson); The Invention of Craft (2013); Postmodernism: Style and Subversion (2011); The Craft Reader (2010); and Thinking Through Craft (2007). He contributes regularly to Art in America, Crafts, Disegno, frieze, The Magazine Antiques, and other publications.
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Adamson was the co-curator of Crafting America at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (2021); Objects: USA 2020 a R & Compay Gallery (2021); Voulkos: The Breakthrough Years at MAD (2016); Beazley Designs of the Year 2017, at the Design Museum, London; and Things of Beauty Growing: British Studio Pottery, at the Yale Center for British Art (2017). His biographical study of the artist Lenore Tawney is included in the John Michael Kohler Art Center’s exhibition catalogue Mirror of the Universe.
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​Abraham Thomas

The Metropolitan Museum of Art appointed Abraham Thomas as Daniel Brodsky Curator of Modern Architecture, Design, and Decorative Arts in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art in September 2020.

For the past four years, Thomas has worked at the Smithsonian Institution, first as the Fleur and Charles Bresler Curator-in-Charge of the Renwick Gallery, and most recently as Senior Curator at the Arts & Industries Building, in Washington, D.C.
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Prior to joining the Smithsonian, he was Director of Sir John Soane's Museum, one of the UK's foremost historic house museums, where from 2013–2015 he oversaw a major restoration of Soane's interiors, initiated new programs with institutions—including MIT's School of Architecture and Planning and MIT Museum; The Architectural Association School of Architecture; the LSE Cities program at the London School of Economics; and the School of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University—and developed collaborative commissions with contemporary artists  and designers. Before then, Thomas was Curator of Designs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, from 2005 to 2013, where he was responsible for the V&A's Architecture Gallery and its strategic partnership with the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Abraham Thomas has published and lectured extensively on architecture, decorative arts, craft, graphic design and photography, with a research focus on the 19th-century to the present.

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