Crafting a Legacy2002
Contemporary American Crafts in the Philadelphia Museum of Art
by Suzanne Ramljak
"Published to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, Crafting a Legacy showcases the Museum's burgeoning collection of contemporary American crafts. More than one hundred color plates illustrate many of the Museum's prime holdings in ceramics, wood, fiber, glass, metal, and furniture.
Entries on sixty-four featured artists, including Dale Chihuly, Wharton Esherick, Sheila Hicks, and Peter Voulkos, place their work in the context of the dynamic field of American crafts. Suzanne Ramljak reveals the valuable role that crafts play in contemporary culture and artistic practice. In a world of bland, mass-produced consumer goods and technologically mediated virtual experience, Ramljak argues that crafts - one-of-a-kind handmade objects - can reawaken our...