Two New Exhibits Come to MAD This Week

Are you looking for a fun, cultural activity for the weekend? Two new exhibitions are opening at the Museum of Arts and Design, or MAD, on Saturday, May 22.

Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe: Tabernacle for Trying Times highlights painter Carrie Moyer’s and sculptor Sheila Pepe’s individual styles and techniques, collaborative works and new directions. The exhibit explores themes of craft, feminism, and queer activism. For Moyer and Pepe, the evolution of their artistic practices is inextricably linked to their twenty-five-year love story. Over the decades, they have broken through homophobic and sexist barriers to build careers of international acclaim. As a painter, Moyer developed a visual language that weaves together abstraction, bodily forms, and logo-like imagery. Pepe is best known for her use of industrial materials, which she knots, knits, and crochets into monumental structures. In the exhibition, individual works from over the last decade demonstrate how Moyer and Pepe have informed each other’s development while maintaining their distinct identities as artists, scholars, women, lesbians, and activists.

Craft Front & Center brings together more than 70 iconic and lesser-known works to highlight key thematic touchpoints in craft’s history that have brought us to this moment. Challenging traditional thinking of craft as separate from fine art, the exhibition reveals the field's deep engagement in art’s major movements, such as Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Postmodernism, while also launching its own revolutions, particularly the elevation of women and people of color as significant artists. Craft Front & Center is organized into eight themes exploring craft’s impact. Each section is punctuated with pivotal and rarely seen works from iconic makers, such as Betty Woodman, Marvin Lipofsky, and Magdalena Abakanowicz. The exhibition also casts a fresh eye on craft’s pioneers; celebrating Olga de Amaral, Charles Loloma, Patti Warashina, and others who pushed the boundaries of materials and sought more inclusive sources of inspiration. Showcasing the diversity and expressive power of the handmade, the exhibition affirms craft as one of the most exciting spaces for experimentation and wonder in art today.

Both exhibitions will be on display until Sunday, February 13, 2022. MAD is open Thursday through Sunday from 11:00am – 7:00pm. Admission tickets to MAD are timed-entry and cost $18 for general admission, $14 for seniors, $12 for students, and free for members and those 18 and under. On Thursdays from 4:00pm – 7:00pm, adult tickets are 50% off and cost $9. Click here to purchase tickets.

Photo credit: left--a piece by Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe; right--Pitter-Podder, 1968, Patti Warashina; Museum of Arts and Design