Fifty-five years ago, art dealer Lee Nordness and curator Paul J. Smith (then the director of what is now the Museum of Arts and Design) organized an exhibition that would send shock waves through the art world.
“Objects: USA,” which debuted at the Smithsonian American Art Museum before traveling to dozens of museums across the country and European continent, was the first major endeavor to inscribe craft movements into the art historical canon and contemporary art landscape. A monumental show in all senses of the term—500 works by 300 artists were on view—it advocated for the consideration of clay, fiber, metal, and wood-working traditions on par with fine art disciplines.
In 2020, design gallery R & Company brought the show’s legacy into the present with a re-staging. They’re back at it again this year with “Objects: USA 2024,” on view at their White Street location in New York through January. The scale is smaller—featuring 100 works by 55 artists—but the aim is no less ambitious. “Our vision is to share the depth and range of object-making across the country, to highlight the incredible diversity of makers engaging in these processes, and to advance scholarship and connect with audiences well beyond New York,” Zesty Meyers and Evan Snyderman, co-founders of R & Company, explained in a statement.
Instrumental to the exhibition’s success are curators Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy and Kellie Riggs. Their vibrant examination of the creative process gathers works by their makers’ intentions and interests, rather than traditional distinctions like medium. Featured in “Objects: USA 2024” are artists and craftspeople that straddle material, geographical, and age ranges (from early 20s to mid-80s!). Among them are Nik Gelormino, who carves hand-felled trees into playful furniture; Ryan Decker, whose animations are influenced by online multiplayer, role-playing games; and Wally Dion, who explores Native ecosystems and the symbolic indigenous significance of the Morning Star. Other notable names include Katie Stout, Hugh Hayden, Roberto Lugo, and Anina Major.
Riggs and Vizcarrondo-Laboy divvied the works on view into seven broad categories or “archetypes,” which suggest a conceptual throughline between this disparate group of artists. From “Doomsdayers,” who grapple with dystopia and utopian dualities of the current political climate, to “Keepers,” who preserve memory and narrativization, each archetype involves the featured artists in broader cultural conversations grounded in the dynamism of object-making.
With a real craft renaissance at the forefront of the zeitgeist, there’s no better time to get to know the makers—and objects—leaving their mark on American design today.
