Join us for deliciously prepared foods largely sourced right from where we will sit at Side Yard Farm, perfectly paired Oregon wines, and artisanal craft at this premiere MoCC Supper Club event!
Tickets are $95-per person, $85 for MoCC Members, including wine and gratuity. Space is limited to 14-guests so reserve early! Not a MoCC member? Join here.
Podcast: “Navigating Whiteout Conditions” by Namita Gupta Wiggers
MoCC Director and Chief Curator, Namita Gupta Wiggers, presents her Distinguished Lecture for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) annual conference, “Navigating Whiteout Conditions: Ceramics in the White Cube, White Tent, and White Page.”
Whiteout is a weather condition in which falling snow or whirling sand obscures the horizon, leaving individuals disoriented by the lack of reference points. Today, ceramics moves through other art world whiteout conditions: the cube, page, and tent. How does ceramics cross through the whiteout to a clear, visible horizon?
Her lecture focused on navigating “whiteout conditions” – the white cube (or quintessential gallery space), the white page (objects on standard white backgrounds in books, magazines, catalogues), and the white tent (street fairs, so on). She posed a simple question: “What are we missing by following established tropes rather than creating new ones?”
Navigating Whiteout Conditions: Ceramics in the White Cube, White Page, and White Tent
MoCC Director and Chief Curator, Namita Gupta Wiggers, presents her Distinguished Lecture for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) annual conference, “Navigating Whiteout Conditions: Ceramics in the White Cube, White Tent, and White Page.”
You can also read a glowing review of Wiggers’ lecture on the NCECA 2013 website.
4-Page Review of Generations: Betty Feves in Ceramics Monthly
The May 2013 issue of Ceramics Monthly includes a 4-page review by Garth Johnson of Generations: Betty Feves and Feves’ ongoing impact on the arts in Oregon.
The article opens with, “Although the exhibition ‘Betty Feves: Generations’ is no longer on view at the Museum of Contemporary Craft (MoCC) in Portland, Oregon, the show’s reverberations will be felt for much longer. Betty Feves, who lived and worked in Pendleton Oregon from 1945 until her death in 1985, was both a singular artist with a unique vision and an archetypal figure – she was one of any number of regional artists who achieved national prominence, but were ultimately more concerned about honing their craft and giving back to their communities.”
Later, Johnson writes, “Under the guidance of Wiggers, the MoCC has fought vigorously to make sure that the Pacific Northwest gets its due when it comes to telling the story of 20th-century studio craft… Generations: Betty Feves has raised the bar for ceramic exhibitions. Rather than falling into the well-work ruts that often befall retrospectives, the Museum of Contemporary Craft has created a highly personal tribute to a figure that helps to tell a larger story of craft in the Pacific Northwest. With each exhibition that is mounted by the Museum, this story becomes even richer and more intriguing.”
Thanks to the generosity of the Feves family and a challenge grant from the Ford Family Foundation/Oregon Art Commission’s Art Acquisition Fund, the Museum is now in a position to provide a permanent Portland home for Garden Wall, one of Betty Feves’ most significant sculptures. We need your help to raise $3,000 before May 15. This is an opportunity for you to support both your Museum and the legacy of Betty Feves.Donate now!
As you may recall, Museum of Contemporary Craft brought the beautiful work of Oregon ceramist Betty Feves back into our community with the exhibition and publication Generations: Betty Feves. This project brought together hundreds of people in many ways from across the state – and even the entire country – through loans of artwork, archives, research, interviews, conversations, funding support and music. It was a great way to end a year of celebrating this Museum’s 75th Anniversary – and to remind everyone of this important Portland treasure.
Thanks to the generosity of the Feves family and a challenge grant from the Ford Family Foundation/Oregon Art Commission’s Art Acquisition Fund, the Museum is now in a position to provide a permanent Portland home for Garden Wall, one of Betty Feves’ most significant sculptures. In order to receive the full award of $40,000, the Museum must raise an additional $20,000. The Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation has awarded $5,000 towards this goal, as well as numerous individuals throughout the Northwest, along with MoCC Board Members – making our current goal $12,000.
I am asking you to consider joining us in this last step to bring the work of this significant Northwest artist into Portland and to make Museum of Contemporary Craft its permanent home.
Betty Feves is an icon in the history of the Museum as well as the art of her time. Her involvement in the mid-century art scene is so relevant with the current “rediscovery “and fascination with mid-century architecture, craft, and design. Garden Wall is meaningful as a historic work, but it is also a work that is totally engaging today. She was an early shaper of Portland’s creative and value-based lifestyle. A life centered around art, mentoring others, love for and giving back to the community one lives in, and commitment to family are all things we Portlanders understand and relate to.
This is an opportunity for you, as a supporter of MoCC, to take action in supporting both the Museum and the legacy of Betty Feves. Every donation helps us reach the goal.
How can you help?
To contribute a gift of any amount, please visit scroll to the top of the page and click SUPPORT. We also invite you to donate through the Gallery Store by calling (503)546-2654. You can also click here to access the Art Acquisition donation page directly.
Our deadline is May 15, which coincides with the opening of Soundforge, the Museum’s exciting new exhibition. We would love to announce the success of this community effort and celebrate our two new exhibitions all at the same time.
We anticipate that Garden Wall will be on display at the Museum as well as in the future Collections space in PNCA’s future Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design.
Please join us in ensuring that this significant piece by an important regional figure remains in Portland by making your gift online today.
Thank you for helping us meet the Garden Wall challenge! We look forward to celebrating with you on May 15!
Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Oregon Art Beat visited Museum of Contemporary Craft earlier this year to interview Director and Chief Curator Namita Gupta Wiggers about the art and practice of curation.
As OPB learned, “It’s a job that entails scholarly work, hands-on exploration, creating exhibits and more.” Oregon Art Beat followed Wiggers through her process, and discovered the art of being a curator. The film crew interviewed Wiggers in the galleries of the Hallie Ford Fellow’s Show, We Tell Each Other Stories in Order to Live, and joined her as she researched and explored the buried oeuvre of Oregon ceramist Betty Feves.
In the words of Namita Gupta Wiggers, “I don’t think I’m ever not being a curator. And I think that’s because of the way I approach curating. For me, curating means asking questions of the world everywhere you go.”
She continues, “I’m always looking around to see if there’s an idea, something that can be turned into a physical exhibition that asks questions, that helps other people ask questions about the world around them. The museum’s like a library. You get to borrow experience and you get to borrow time with things you might not get to live with. To create a space where people can do that, that’s really exciting to me.”
Featuring, among others, Namita Gupta Wiggers, Director and Chief Curator of Museum of Contemporary Craft, Kat Perez, Exhibition Coordinator, and Damara Bartlett, Curatorial Assistant.
Video production by Oregon Art Beat, Oregon Public Broadcasting, April 03, 2013.
You can watch other MoCC videos on MoCC’s Youtube page.
In a glowing article, Finally, the Bowl Gets Its Due, New York Times writer Julie Lasky delves into the exhibition Object Focus: The Bowl and the relationships between tradition, craft, and design it investigates.
The article begins by discussing a recent Northern Song dynasty bowl that went for more than $2.2 million at auction in Sotheby’s.
But as Lasky notes, the bowl is easily overlooked. In a phone conversation with Lasky, Wiggers said, “we don’t talk about the bowl because it’s completely this everyday thing. We take it for granted. We know it too well.”
And thus the impetus behind the exhibition Object Focus: The Bowl: to draw attention to and unpack an everyday object that is filled to the brim with thousands of years of craft and design.
Wiggers is quoted as saying, “When I talk to people about the bowl, it is always about something else. It’s a metaphorical conversation about ritual, like in the tea ceremony, or about the fabrication process. It’s very hard to just talk about the bowl itself. We talk around the bowl.”
Lasky discusses the writing component of the exhibition as well, with writings by artists, historians, novelists, and more on a Tumblr site, noting work by writers such as Mara Holt Skov and Daniel Duford. She writes, “Ms. Wiggers has capitalized on the narrative richness of bowls by inviting scholars, writers and artisans to select an example from the show and write a brief essay about it.”
Read written accounts and essay on the Object Focus The BowlTumblr here.
MoCC Director and Chief Curator, Namita Gupta Wiggers, presents her Distinguished Lecture for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) annual conference, Navigating Whiteout Conditions: Ceramics in the White Cube, White Tent, and White Page.
We wondered: how could MoCC transform a commonplace object into a topic of discussion that connects the bowls used at home with the bowls on view in the Museum? We have kickstarted a conversation about bowls through writings and drawings contributed by people from many disciplines and from all over the country. Now, we invite every one of you to participate. Contribute writing or a drawing at the on-site stations, or online at MuseumofContemporaryCraft.org. Your contributions will be placed on view at the Musem and uploaded to our tumblr site at objectfocusbowl.tumblr.
Museum of Contemporary Craft invites you to share your written and drawn observations, reflections, and memories about bowls.
You may select a bowl on view in the exhibition, or choose one from your personal history and daily life. Both written and visual illustrations will be enthusiastically accepted; however, MoCC cannot guarantee to publish every submission received. New submissions will be posted in the exhibition in print, and be uploaded digitally to this Tumblr feed on the 1st and 15th of every month, March 15 – August 1, 2013.
How to Participate:
Email a text of no more than 500-words and/or images on Bowls to Curatorial@MuseumofContemporaryCraft.org. Please include your name, location, information about your object, and connection with MoCC/Object Focus in your email.
Curator of Collections and Registrar Nicole Nathan, and local craft collector Ron Werner talk from two perspectives about objects. How do collectors see, handle, and think about their work? How does a museum think about, utilize, and care for the objects in their collections? Listen for a behind-the-scenes tour of the museum’s storage areas and research library. For collectors, object enthusiasts, and everyone in between.
Perspectives on Craft + Design Symposium: One Object, Two Views
MoCC Curator of Collections and Registrar Nicole Nathan, and local craft collector Ron Werner will talk from two perspectives about objects. January 31, 2013.
Today marks Object Focus: The Bowl joining We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live at the Museum – and we couldn’t be more excited! With nearly 200 bowls on view spanning 400 years, I know you will be surprised and delighted with the range. I hope you can join me for a special curatorial walkthrough tomorrow, Friday March 8 2-3pm.
Now it’s your turn. The first part of this exhibition – REFLECT + RESPOND – offers a chance for us to hear what you think about the bowl. Be sure to visit the Museum website and tumblr to learn how to contribute your own writing and drawing to the project.
We are resisting the temptation to send you writing, photos, and drawings all at once. You will see why as you check it out online. Instead, we will post new bowl stories to the tumblr each day. Speaking for all of us at the Museum, we cannot thank the writers who’ve provided the essays to start this off enough, and are truly grateful to the collectors and institutions who’ve lent work so we could explore this topic with you.
When you visit the Museum, you will see Chinese bowls from 1690 created from porcelain – and how that same shape continues to inspire people today, as do the Japanese and Korean tea bowls on view as well. From the mid-century forward – you will see bowls which remain as they’ve been for centuries mixed with bowls in new materials, forms and shapes. The bowl here morphs from a functional Native American mush basket to a farm bowl to a Styrofoam ramen bowl made to look like a traditional Japanese ceramic bowl – ready for the microwave!
A special gift to the Museum’s Collection from Bank of America will be unveiled at a special event for members and special guests on March 14. We are deeply honored that Bank of America chose Museum of Contemporary Craft for this gift, and especially thrilled to share it with all of you. The new gift to the collection, Untitled Sculpture, by Betty Feves, will be on view through the end of March in The Lab.
Join us for Friday’s Curatorial Walkthrough and check out the many program offerings. We can connect you to craft each week – with programs ranging from Drop-in-and-Make for our youngest visitors and their parents to lectures and panels on specific exhibitions. New additions include upcoming workshops on Indonesian batik and wheel techniques. There is something for everyone wanting to connect craft with their lives.
Last, but not least, I am honored for the invitation to deliver the Distinguished Lecture at NCECA later this month. I look forward to seeing all the ceramic artists, potters, collectors, and curators in Houston!
Namita Gupta Wiggers Director and Chief Curator
@namitagw
