The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design announces 2014 Craft Research Fund recipients

The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design (CCCD) is pleased to announce the recipients for the 2014 Craft Research Fund grants. This year, ten organizations, curators, scholars, and graduate students will receive a total of $95,000 to support and expand scholarly craft research, exhibitions, catalogs, and projects in the United States, including the Museum of Arts and Design and the Patricia & Phillip Frost Museum of Science, among others.

This marks the tenth year CCCD has awarded Craft Research Fund grants, the only major funding source for craft research in the United States. Assistant Director Marilyn Zapf states, “The Craft Research Fund has legitimized the study, and by extension the practice, of craft through fostering institutional backing of craft-based studies, exhibitions, and conferences.”

The goals of this peer-reviewed grant are to support innovative research on critical issues in craft theory and history; to explore the interrelationships among craft, art, design and contemporary culture; to foster new cross-disciplinary approaches to scholarship in the craft field; and to advance investigation of neglected questions on craft history and criticism in the United States. The Craft Research Fund grants are funded by a private charitable foundation.

This year’s panel included: John Stuart Gordon, Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Assistant Curator of American Decorative Arts, Yale University Art Gallery; Bibiana Obler, Associate Professor of Art History, George Washington University; and Catherine Whalen, Assistant Professor of American Material Culture Studies, Bard Graduate Center.

Project Grants

$10,000 – Nicole Burisch, Independent Curator, Artist, Critic and Cultural Worker & Anthea Black, Independent Artist, Writer and Cultural Worker

Support for research, interviews, and artist projects on politically engaged craft, making links to material histories of political action, and situating craft in relation to the politics and economics of the 21^st century.

$10,000 – Asheley Pigford, Assistant Professor, University of Delaware & Tricia Treacy, Assistant Professor, Appalachian State University

Support for the examination, documentation and workshopping of contemporary, post-digital creative practice with a specific focus on understanding the relationship between handmade production and digital technologies.

$15,000 – Regina Root, Associate Professor, The College of William and Mary

Funding for research and analysis of the so-called Tillett Tapestry, crafted with an estimated fifty-five million stitches and 106-feet in length, representing the conquest of Mexico from both indigenous and Spanish point of view.

Exhibition Research Grants

$6,500 – Del Harrow, Associate Professor of Art, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO and Joshua Stein, Associate Professor of Architecture, Woodbury University

Support for the exhibition Data Clay: Digital Strategies for Parsing the Earth at the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design and related symposium at California College of Art that will critically address the nascent movement of architects, artists, and designers exploring the medium of ceramics coupled with digital technologies.

$10,000 – James Herring, Exhibitions Manager/Designer, Patricia & Philip Frost Museum of Science

Support for development of an interactive exhibition, Maker Space and online components to focus on the intersection of craft and science, specifically craft as a process of making and its intersections with technology.

$10,000 – Museum of Arts and Design

Pathmakers: Women in Modern Craft, Midcentury and Today will illuminate the contributions of women to postwar visual culture and their use of craft materials to explore concepts of modernism.

$12,000 – Josephine Stealey, Professor, University of Missouri-Columbia

Rooted, Revived, Reinvented: Basketry in America, an exhibition exploring the history of basketry in America, from its origins in Native American, immigrant, and slave communities to its presence and influence within contemporary fine craft.

$5,000 – Keaton Wynn, Associate Professor, Department of Fine Arts at Georgia Southwestern State University

Ralph Harvey Retrospective: A History of Glass Education in the Rural South, an exhibition at the Albany Museum of Art bringing public attention to the contributions of the active glass program at Southwestern State University in rural Georgia, built by Ralph Harvey.

Graduate Research Grants

$6,500 – Braden Malnic, George Mason University
Support for master’s research situating abstract/experimental filmmaker James Whitney’s (1921-1982) Raku pottery in terms of craft history and criticism.

$10,000 – Kelley Totten, Indiana University, Bloomington
Support for PHD dissertation research investigating contemporary craft environments at adult craft education sites, focusing on U.S. - based craft folk schools.

Previous year recipients can be found at:

www.craftcreativitydesign.org/grants/craft-research-fund

The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design is a national nonprofit organization that advances the understanding of craft by encouraging and supporting research, critical dialogue, and professional development in the United States.