Craft Folk Art Museum Los Angeles Ca 90036
The Craft & Folk Art Museum is losing an ampersand — and gaining a new name: The Wilshire Boulevard museum will denote Tuesday that it will go by Craft Gimmicky, constructive immediately.
The new name is an effort to better reflect what the museum has been emphasizing of late: the intersection of gimmicky fine art, craft and design, every bit opposed to historical exhibitions or defended folk fine art shows.
The name Craft Contemporary "looks brightly to the future and plants us in the now," executive director Suzanne Isken said.
"The now" may be more than highly-seasoned to new and younger audiences. The museum'southward visitorship and membership take tripled since 2011; it drew most 36,000 visitors in 2018 and has almost 900 members. A hipper and more accessible name, the museum said, will signal "fresh and relevant" to a greater numbers of visitors.
"Of course we'd honey to keep growing and attracting more people. Is that part of the proper noun alter? Absolutely," Isken said. "It'south true that to a number of people, our board members say, that when they say 'arts and crafts and folk museum,' people accept an association to something very old and very dusty."
The cutting newspaper and multimedia installation "Of night and calorie-free and the half-lite" by Chris Natrop was office of the Craft & Folk Art Museum'south 2015 "Paperworks" prove.
(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)
"Folk art" is a tricky phrase, Isken said, one that conjures different meanings for unlike people.
"Information technology's historical, it'southward international, it's traditional, it's so many things," Isken said. That tin be confusing to visitors, she said. Equally a noncollecting museum, Craft Contemporary doesn't have the same commitment to historical works that other museums might, though it does plan to offer educational programs near the history of craft. "We're looking more at the procedure, the hands-on, the materiality," she said. "And we felt that by calling ourselves the Craft & Folk Art Museum, that it was a little limiting."
Cross-disciplinary artists, experimentation within mediums and the blurring of lines between formerly siloed categories of art, such as "outsider art," all point to a trend abroad from categorization, Isken said.
"We experience like folk is a kind of craft; we don't come across it as a separate category," she said. "All this stuff — folk fine art, craft, gimmicky art, fine fine art, loftier art, low art, street art — it all comes together in 1 category: art. And then for us, those categories aren't useful anymore. If you're weaving in Oaxaca, information technology's craft."
The change, Isken said, isn't meant to signal a shift in programming. "What you've seen here over the last 8 years is what y'all'll proceed to see," she said.
Isken's museum has aimed to mistiness boundaries, she said, showing fine artists working in glass, metal, cutting paper and even sugar alongside craft artists working conceptually. In 2015 it showed functional sculptural works by L.A. shoe designer Chris Francis, in 2016 it exhibited the painter and performance creative person Gronk's piece of work in theatrical gear up design, and in 2017 information technology showed creative person Betye Saar's washboard assemblage works.
From the 2017 Betye Saar exhibition "Keepin' Information technology Make clean" at the Craft & Folk Art Museum.
(Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
Art historian and craft specialist Jenni Sorkin said the new proper noun is not only more plumbing fixtures but likewise a branding necessity in the current Los Angeles museum landscape. The surrounding Miracle Mile neighborhood's contour is ascent. The University Museum of Motion Pictures plans to open later this yr, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art aims to break footing on its new building early next year, opening in 2024 shortly after a new subway line deposits even more visitors into the area.
"They're the merely space in the city other than the Craft in America Center, a small storefront space that'southward very nether-recognized, focused on showing gimmicky craft," Sorkin said. "And then I remember this focuses and consolidates the mission — to acknowledge studio craft history but moving forrard into the 21st century."
The proper noun change volition be the institution's second in 53 years. Artist and patron (and actor Noah Wyle's grandmother) Edith Robinson Wyle founded a cafe and commercial gallery, the Egg & the Eye, in 1965. When information technology transitioned to a nonprofit museum in 1973, information technology was renamed the Craft & Folk Art Museum.
Rebranding, peculiarly in a social media-driven marketing landscape, is no small feat, and challenges lie ahead. For better or worse, the museum is known as "CAFAM" (pronounced as CAFF-am) and may lose traction in Google searches when the URL changes. Simply the awkward acronym was ever an upshot, Isken said.
"Information technology doesn't hateful anything. If you don't know usa, what is CAFAM? Information technology could be OXFAM, it could be ANYFAM," she joked.
Pushback to the proper name change volition be inevitable. Some may encounter information technology equally a dis to folk fine art or worry who volition brainwash the public near folk traditions. At a time when Los Angeles is seeing more contemporary ceramics, textiles, mode and furniture blueprint displayed in art galleries and design boutiques, and is seeing more contemporary art museums open hither, does the metropolis need another museum focusing on contemporary artists? Will some object to what appears to be a plow away from folk fine art or art from non-Western cultures?
"At that place's always pushback because we're going forward," Isken said. "Merely there'south naught in our name or our mission that says we wouldn't prove work from non-Western cultures. We aim to be more diverse."
Diluting the focus on folk art could create an opportunity for other institutions such as the Fowler Museum at UCLA, the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana or LACMA, which is currently exhibiting "Outliers and American Vanguard Art," a show partly most folk fine art. "That's what makes 50.A. such a rich, cultural landscape," Isken said, "all the choices."
Anthony Sonnenberg'south "Vase (My Kind of Witches Cauldron)" 2017, porcelain, stoneware, found ceramic objects, glaze and underglaze. Information technology was part of CAFAM's countdown clay biennial, "Melting Signal."
(Anthony Sonnenberg)
To mark its name change, Craft Contemporary will stage two free panels this leap: one addressing the history of the museum and the other, at which Sorkin will appear, on the future of craft.
The outset shows to debut under the new name will exist "Trinidad / Joy Station," a solo exhibition of work by 50.A.-based Salvadoran creative person Beatriz Cortez, and the third iteration of the Farhang Foundation biennial, "Focus Islamic republic of iran three: Contemporary Photography and Video," which this twelvemonth spotlights Iranian youth. Both exhibitions open Jan. 27.
In 2018 the museum launched a ceramics biennial, "Melting Point," which featured more than 27 living American artists experimenting with clay processes.
In Jan 2020, Craft Contemporary will stage the second iteration of the biennial, "The Body, the Object, the Other," focusing on representational forms in dirt.
A new website is coming this April, at which point the museum will commission an creative person to redo its façade.
"We're thinking of 'craft' every bit a verb — the procedure of making, of turning materials and ideas into something," Isken said. "That'southward what defines us going frontward."
deborah.vankin@latimes.com
Follow me on Twitter: @debvankin
Source: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-craft-museum-name-change-20190115-story.html
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