Events Calendar

An ongoing exhibition of the Museum’s growing permanent collection of over 3,500 objects, Craft Front & Center features a fresh installation of more than 60 historic works and new acquisitions dating from the golden age of the American Craft movement to the present day. Organized into themes of material transformation, dismantling hierarchies, contemplation, identity, and sustainability, the exhibition illuminates how the expansive field of craft has broadened definitions of art.

Established at the Museum’s beginning in 1956, MAD's permanent collection was the vision of Museum founder, Aileen Osborne Webb, the collector and philanthropist who pioneered an understanding of craft and the handmade as a creative driving force of art and design. With the aim of broadening access to the collection's holdings, Craft Front & Center will be periodically updated with new displays of rarely seen works and recent additions, as well as inspiration for hands-on workshops and off-site field trips. 

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts celebrates the long and colorful career of costume designer Willa Kim in her first-ever major retrospective exhibition, The Wondrous Willa Kim: Costume Designs for Actors and Dancers.

From her earliest designs to her very last production, Kim demonstrated her gift for creating whimsical costumes by using extraordinary combinations of color and texture. The show features an assortment of designs and costumes from her long and prolific career, including work from productions like Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies, The Will Rogers Follies, and her final Broadway show, Victor/Victoria starring Julie Andrews.

Material Witness: Folk and Self-Taught Artists at Work will be on view at the American Folk Art Museum from March 17, 2023, through October 29, 2023. Organized into four distinct sections, the exhibition will explore how artists learn with and through material engagement, often in ways that evade and exceed conventional frameworks for artistic training.

One section will highlight artistic practices that respect and respond to the properties of regionally-sourced materials. Featured are works by artists including Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Ammi Phillips, and Jesse Aaron, as well as examples of earthenware, fraktur, and watercolor paintings. Another section will explore why makers gravitate to certain media and methods, such as sculpting, painting and textile-making, and consider what prompts changes to artistic approach over time.

The exhibition will also feature works that embody a striving towards healing, protection, and transcendence. Artworks by Minnie Evans, Martín Ramírez, and Lonnie Holley transform found and collected materials sourced from everyday objects into vehicles for communion with spiritual and otherwordly realms.

Funk You Too! Humor and Irreverence in Ceramic Sculpture brings together 50 artworks from the 1960s to the present day that highlight clay as a compelling tool of critique and satire. In the exhibition, pieces by artists of the originating Funk Art generation will be placed next to work by contemporary artists who are expanding on Funk’s legacy of humor, subversion, and expressive figuration.

Funk ceramics first emerged on the West Coast in the 1960s, created by a group of artists who shared an anti-establishment viewpoint towards expectations of “good art.” While conscious of the irreverent attitude and aesthetics of their predecessors, the new generation of artists featured in Funk You Too! are examining the potential for humor in clay through a rainbow of perspectives. Carrying Funk into the future, these artists are tapping into the power of a good joke to address some of the most pressing social and political issues of our day. 

Generation Paper: A Fashion Phenom of the 1960s explores the era’s short-lived phenomenon of paper fashion through more than 60 rare garments and accessories crafted from non-woven textiles. These fashions, introduced in 1966 as a promotional campaign for Scott Paper Company, combined bold, graphic design with space-age innovations in materials. Sporting patterns inspired by pop art, op art, anti-war “flower power,” and more, paper fashion's iconic silhouettes and styles—from A-line mini dresses to bikinis—became daring demonstrations of the durability and design potential of the era’s newly developed paper-like fibers, such as rayon (a cellulose fiber), polyester, and other synthetic blends. Surfacing a little-known chapter in the history of design, Generation Paper illuminates the creative partnerships of craft and commerce in the development of semi-synthetic and synthetic materials.

After four years away, our Jazz 301 course is back! In this course we will explore an intense study of jazz history through a cultural, historical, and political lenses. Students will consider questions tied to power and ownership in jazz over time. Students will explore and analyze primary sources such as films, periodicals, biographies, and oral histories.  The format of the course will be a combination of in class listening, discussion, lectures, and in class videos. We will explore the literature associated with jazz music through a multitude of texts including but not limited to music, readings, and film.

An ongoing exhibition of the Museum’s growing permanent collection of over 3,500 objects, Craft Front & Center features a fresh installation of more than 60 historic works and new acquisitions dating from the golden age of the American Craft movement to the present day. Organized into themes of material transformation, dismantling hierarchies, contemplation, identity, and sustainability, the exhibition illuminates how the expansive field of craft has broadened definitions of art.

Established at the Museum’s beginning in 1956, MAD's permanent collection was the vision of Museum founder, Aileen Osborne Webb, the collector and philanthropist who pioneered an understanding of craft and the handmade as a creative driving force of art and design. With the aim of broadening access to the collection's holdings, Craft Front & Center will be periodically updated with new displays of rarely seen works and recent additions, as well as inspiration for hands-on workshops and off-site field trips. 

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts celebrates the long and colorful career of costume designer Willa Kim in her first-ever major retrospective exhibition, The Wondrous Willa Kim: Costume Designs for Actors and Dancers.

From her earliest designs to her very last production, Kim demonstrated her gift for creating whimsical costumes by using extraordinary combinations of color and texture. The show features an assortment of designs and costumes from her long and prolific career, including work from productions like Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies, The Will Rogers Follies, and her final Broadway show, Victor/Victoria starring Julie Andrews.

Material Witness: Folk and Self-Taught Artists at Work will be on view at the American Folk Art Museum from March 17, 2023, through October 29, 2023. Organized into four distinct sections, the exhibition will explore how artists learn with and through material engagement, often in ways that evade and exceed conventional frameworks for artistic training.

One section will highlight artistic practices that respect and respond to the properties of regionally-sourced materials. Featured are works by artists including Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Ammi Phillips, and Jesse Aaron, as well as examples of earthenware, fraktur, and watercolor paintings. Another section will explore why makers gravitate to certain media and methods, such as sculpting, painting and textile-making, and consider what prompts changes to artistic approach over time.

The exhibition will also feature works that embody a striving towards healing, protection, and transcendence. Artworks by Minnie Evans, Martín Ramírez, and Lonnie Holley transform found and collected materials sourced from everyday objects into vehicles for communion with spiritual and otherwordly realms.

Funk You Too! Humor and Irreverence in Ceramic Sculpture brings together 50 artworks from the 1960s to the present day that highlight clay as a compelling tool of critique and satire. In the exhibition, pieces by artists of the originating Funk Art generation will be placed next to work by contemporary artists who are expanding on Funk’s legacy of humor, subversion, and expressive figuration.

Funk ceramics first emerged on the West Coast in the 1960s, created by a group of artists who shared an anti-establishment viewpoint towards expectations of “good art.” While conscious of the irreverent attitude and aesthetics of their predecessors, the new generation of artists featured in Funk You Too! are examining the potential for humor in clay through a rainbow of perspectives. Carrying Funk into the future, these artists are tapping into the power of a good joke to address some of the most pressing social and political issues of our day. 

Generation Paper: A Fashion Phenom of the 1960s explores the era’s short-lived phenomenon of paper fashion through more than 60 rare garments and accessories crafted from non-woven textiles. These fashions, introduced in 1966 as a promotional campaign for Scott Paper Company, combined bold, graphic design with space-age innovations in materials. Sporting patterns inspired by pop art, op art, anti-war “flower power,” and more, paper fashion's iconic silhouettes and styles—from A-line mini dresses to bikinis—became daring demonstrations of the durability and design potential of the era’s newly developed paper-like fibers, such as rayon (a cellulose fiber), polyester, and other synthetic blends. Surfacing a little-known chapter in the history of design, Generation Paper illuminates the creative partnerships of craft and commerce in the development of semi-synthetic and synthetic materials.

Join pianist Aaron Rimbui and Swing U curator Seton Hawkins as they guide you through the styles of two of West Africa’s greatest musical minds: Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango and Congolese vocalist and guitarist Franco. Over six weeks we’ll explore each of these remarkable musicians and place their artistic accomplishments in the context and history of African popular music.