Museum Exhibitions Making Knowing Craft in Art, 1950–2019 Whitney Museum of American Art, New YorkNovember 22, 2019 – January 2021 On view through January 2021 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 features works by Pace artists Claes Oldenburg, Agnes Martin, Lucas Samaras, Arlene Shechet and Robert Rauschenberg.The exhibition foregrounds how visual artists have explored the materials, methods, and strategies of craft over the past seven decades. Some expand techniques with long histories, such as weaving, sewing, or pottery, while others experiment with textiles, thread, clay, beads, and glass, among other mediums. The traces of the artists’ hands-on engagement with their materials invite viewers to imagine how it might feel to make each work.While artists’ reasons for taking up craft range widely, many aim to subvert prevalent standards of so-called “fine art,” often in direct response to the politics of their time. In challenging accepted ideas of taste—whether by embracing the decorative or turning away from traditional painting and sculpture in favor of functional items like bowls or blankets—these artists reclaim visual languages that have typically been coded as feminine, domestic, or vernacular. By highlighting marginalized modes of artistic production, these artists challenge the power structures that determine artistic value.This exhibition provides new perspectives on subjects that have been central to artists, including abstraction, popular culture, feminist and queer aesthetics, and recent explorations of identity and relationships to place. Together, the works demonstrate that craft-informed techniques of making carry their own kind of knowledge, one that is crucial to a more complete understanding of the history and potential of art.Drawn primarily from the Whitney’s collection, the exhibition will include over eighty works by more than sixty artists. For more information, please visit the museum's (opens in a new window) website. Read More Installation view of Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, November 22, 2019–January 2021). From left to right: Peter Voulkos, Red River, c. 1960; Robert Rauschenberg, Yoicks, 1954; Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.270, Hanging Six-Lobed, Complex Interlocking Continuous Form within a Form with Two Interior Spheres), 1955, refabricated 1957-58. Photograph by Ron Amstutz 1/5 Installation view of Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, November 22, 2019–January 2021). From left to right: Agnes Martin, Untitled, c. 1960; Agnes Martin, Untitled, c. 1960; Lenore G. Tawney, The Great Breath, 1964; Chryssa, Untitled (March 26, 1962) from Newspaper Book, 1962. Photograph by Ron Amstutz 2/5 Installation view of Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, November 22, 2019–January 2021). From left to right: Claes Oldenburg, Giant BLT (Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato Sandwich), 1963; Yayoi Kusama, Accumulation, c. 1963; Richard Artschwager, Description of Table, 1964. Photograph by Ron Amstutz 3/5 Installation view of Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, November 22, 2019–January 2021). From left to right: Mary Heilmann, Monochrome Chairs, 2015; Arlene Shechet, A Night Out, 2011. Photograph by Ron Amstutz 4/5 Installation view of Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, November 22, 2019–January 2021). From left to right: Lucas Samaras, Box #124, 1988; Robert Gober, Untitled, 1991; Kiki Smith, Familiars, 2001–02. Photograph by Ron Amstutz 5/5 Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Journal View All Exhibitions London Gallery Weekend 2024 May 15, 2024 Museum Exhibitions Kevin Francis Gray at the Rudolph Tegners Museum and Sculpturepark May 13, 2024 Films Maysha Mohamedi and Sebastian Baden in Conversation May 09, 2024 Museum Exhibitions Tara Donovan at the Bruce Museum May 08, 2024 Museum Exhibitions — Pace Artists Featured in "Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019", Jan 13, 2020