NYC's Museum of Arts and Design Announces 2014 Exhibition Schedule

As the Museum of Arts and Design approaches its five-year anniversary at its Columbus Circle location, the museum is preparing to celebrate this milestone with a diverse roster of exhibitions and programs that emphasize its focus on materials, process, and contemporary creation. Featured exhibitions in 2013 include Fashion Jewelry: The Collection of Barbara Berger, Body & Soul: New International Ceramics, and Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital. A further highlight of the year is MAD's annual curated contemporary jewelry exhibition and saleLOOT 2013: MAD About Jewelry.

Anniversary celebrations continue in 2014 with Inspired; New Territories: Design, Art and Craft in Global Latin America, 2000-2013; and Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography.

Opening in spring 2014, Inspired is the centerpiece of MAD's fifth anniversary and will present a thematic overview of works that have joined the MAD collections since the opening of the new building in 2008. The diversity of materials, techniques, geographic origins, and function explore alternate forms of artistic inspiration and also reflect MAD's mission to explore the creative synergy among art, craft, and design.

Next summer New Territories: Design, Art and Craft in Global Latin America, 2000-2013 will present works from 80 designers, artists, crafts practitioners, and collectives from Latin America, building on MAD's 2010 exhibition, The Global Africa Project. Also opening in summer 2014, Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography will be the first museum exhibition to focus on the interface of two rapidly evolving visual art forms-studio jewelry and photography-over the course of the last century. Multiple Exposures is an assemblage of provocative and expressive works by over 80 contemporary jewelry artists from across the globe. This exhibition displays an astonishing range of concepts and techniques, featuring many works that have never been exhibited before.

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS 2013

Fashion Jewelry: The Collection of Barbara Berger
June 25 - September 22, 2013
(A portion of this exhibition will be on view through January 20, 2014.)

Featuring over 450 pieces of fashion jewelry by designers such as Miriam Haskell, Marcel Boucher, Balenciaga, Kenneth Jay Lane, and Gripoix, this exhibition will be an eye-opening display of necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, many of them one-of-a-kind, drawn from the world-renowned collection of Barbara Berger. The daughter of an American diamond merchant, Berger began her collection of some 3,000 bijoux de couture when she purchased a pair of Chanel earrings at a French flea market as a teenager and went on to assemble one of the largest and finest collections of couture jewelry in the world.

Many of the works were made expressly to be worn with haute couture clothing by fashion designers that range from Chanel to Yves Saint Laurent, and Dior to Dolce & Gabbana. The Berger collection and this exhibition are virtual encyclopedias of this exciting and provocative era of fashion history. The exhibition also underscores the continuing popularity of couture jewelry today through stellar contemporary works.

The exhibition is accompanied by a major publication on the Berger collection published by Assouline, with essays by fashion guru Iris Apfel, and by jewelry historian Harrice Simons Miller. The publication will be available at The Store at MAD. A wide range of educational programs will accompany the exhibition, including lectures and panel discussions, designer-led exhibition tours, and hands-on jewelry workshops and demonstrations in MAD's 6th floor Open Studios.

The exhibition was organized by David McFadden, William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design, in collaboration with jewelry historian Harrice Simons Miller, as guest curator.

Support for Fashion Jewelry: The Collection of Barbara Bergergenerously provided by Miriam Haskell, with additional support from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, the official airline of MAD.

Body & Soul: New International Ceramics
September 24, 2013 - March 2, 2014

In recent years, the human figure has returned to center stage in the work of artists around the world. Body & Soul: Contemporary International Ceramics underscores the power of the figure to convey strong emotions, and also to the accessibility of the ceramic medium. Through clay, the figure becomes the catalyst for addressing the emotional impact of contemporary pressures that confront our society today. Each work, inspired by a personal incident or symbolic tale, expresses a deep emotional identity, contrasting societal, political and personal views on themes such as anxiety, mortality, memory and hope.

The exhibition will highlight 25 International Artists who came to clay as painters, draughtsmen or sculptors. Many are being shown for the first time in the United States. The range and quality of the works will make this exhibition significant, engaging and provocative, and bring this area of creativity into much-deserved focus.

This exhibition is organized and curated by Wendy Tarlow Kaplan with the advisement of Laurent de Verneuil, Martin S. Kaplan, and by David McFadden, William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design.

Major support for Body & Soul: New International Ceramics is provided by George Abrams, Dale and Doug Anderson, Kate and Gerald Chertavian, Friends of Contemporary Ceramics, the Glassman Family Fund at the Boston Foundation, Hunt Alternatives Fund, Nancy Klavans, Cheryl and Philip Milstein, David and Susan Rockefeller, Michael and Karen Rotenberg, Lisbeth Tarlow, four anonymous donors, with additional support from a group of private donors.

LOOT: MAD About Jewelry
October 1 - 5, 2013

LOOT 2013: MAD About Jewelry, The Museum of Arts and Design's annual curated exhibition and sale of one-of-a-kind, artist-made jewelry will return this fall from October 1-5, 2013. Now in its 13th year, LOOT has become the ultimate pop-up shop for contemporary studio and art jewelry, offering the public the rare opportunity to meet some of the most innovative jewelry artists in the world and directly acquire pieces from them. Over 50 jewelers from 20 countries are represented in this year's exhibition and sale. LOOT will also showcase the work of two jewelry students from New York's Pratt Institute.

Each year, the LOOT Award for Contemporary Art Jewelry is presented to luminaries in the field of jewelry, including artists, collectors, and designers. This annual prize is in keeping with the long-standing commit-ment of the Museum of Arts and Design to present jewelry as an art form, and this year will be awarded to patron and collector Barbara Berger and icon of fashion and style Iris Apfel. MAD is the only American museum to possess a gallery dedicated to the display of both temporary jewelry exhibits and its own collection of contemporary and modern studio and art jewelry, which it began assembling soon after its founding in 1956.

Proceeds from the selling show benefit the Museum's exhibition and education programs. LOOT 2013 is made possible in part through the generous support of the Silver Institute: Silver Promotion Service.

Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital
October 14, 2013 - July 6, 2014

Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital will explore the many areas of 21st-century creativity made possible by advanced methods of computer-assisted production known as digital fabrication. In today's postdigital world, artists are using these means to achieve levels of expression never before possible-an explosive, unprecedented scope of artistic expression that extends from sculptural fantasy to functional beauty. Out of Hand will be the first major museum exhibition to examine this interdisciplinary trend through the pioneering works of more than 80 International Artists, architects, and designers, including Ron Arad, Barry X Ball, Zaha Hadid, Stephen Jones, Anish Kapoor, Allan McCollum, Marc Newson, and Roxy Paine. Represented will be some of the most compelling creations from the past decade ranging from sculpture and furniture to fashion and transport.

It will be the first museum show to consider the impact of these new, revolutionary methods of computer-assisted manufacture on fine art, design, and architecture, and will introduce the public to the imaginative expression that these emerging processes enable. Through this exhibition, MAD will explore a monumental transition in the way human beings define creation through these individual makers who utilize the tools of technological innovation.

Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital is organized by Ronald T. Labaco, Marcia Docter Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design.

Major support for Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital is provided by Lucite International and Shapeways. Support is also generously provided by Infor, with additional support from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, the official airline of MAD.

EXHIBITIONS OPENING IN 2014

Inspired
March 18, 2014 - October 13, 2014

Inspired will examine the myriad sources-people, places, events, circumstances, and obsessions-that have inspired artist and designers to create works that engage, provoke, and delight.

From its opening in 1956 as the Museum of Contemporary Craft, MAD has been an advocate for established and emerging talent in such mediums as clay, metal, glass, wood, and fiber. With its opening in a new home at Two Columbus Circle five years ago, MAD expanded its mission and vision to include a broad range of creative work that looks at the importance of craftsmanship today through the lens of contemporary art and design. In these five years, the MAD collections have grown in diversity and depth, ranging from traditional materials and techniques such as weaving and glassblowing, to entirely new materials, the most innovative of digital and post digital processes, to installation and performative arts.

Inspired is organized around six themes or ideas that have inspired creativity. These include the world of Nature, the passage of Time, the artistic potential of Materials, Processes, autobiographical or cultural Narrative, and meditative Silence. Works from the MAD collection have been selected to provide insights and clues into the sources of inspiration that drive creativity.

Inspired is organized by David McFadden, William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design.

Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography
June 24, 2014 - January 18, 2015

Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography explores the compelling personal, social, cultural, and artistic issues being addressed today through the pairing of two dynamic visual art forms: studio jewelry and photography-or photo-jewelry.

Multiple Exposures is organized around six themes: "Saving Face" explores the use of portraiture in jewelry to memorialize people as well as represent psychological states; "The Body in Play" presents digitally manipulated and fractured imagery of the human body; "Remembered Places, Imagined Spaces" manipulates photographs of rural and urban landscapes to reimagine these often overlooked spaces; "Appropriation and Pastiche" presents works by artists who reinterpret fine and decorative art through the incorporation and substitution of iconic imagery and themes from art history, popular culture and film; "Displaced Lenses/Orphaned Apertures: Apparatus as Art" dismantles and isolates the physical components of a camera, creating contemporary and wearable pieces of jewelry; "Beyond Wearability" presents photographic and video works that explore the social functions and conventions of jewelry and draw attention to the behavior of wearing.

In order to place the contemporary works within an historical, technical, and aesthetic context, Multiple Exposures will also include an introductory section that incorporates early daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, and albumen silver prints into lockets, brooches, bracelets and other small objects to serve as relics, keepsakes, and signs of devotion.

Multiple Exposures is organized by Ursula Ilse-Neuman, Curator of Jewelry at the Museum of Arts and Design.

New Territories: Design, Art and Craft in Global Latin America,
2000-2013
July 29, 2014 - March 15, 2015

Global Latin America will broadly survey contemporary trends and ideas in design, craft and art from the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking communities of South and Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean, the United States, and Europe. Global Latin America will include the work of approximately 70 designers, artists, craftspersons and collectives whose work demonstrates the migration of traditional craft and artisan work to the mainstream through collaborations with artists and designers; the mediation of objects through manipulation and recycling strategies; the language of form in the context of global design; and adaptive strategies in the habitation of the body, architecture and urban spaces.

Global Latin America follows the groundbreaking 2010 exhibition,The Global Africa Project, and will survey new artistic talent emerging from Latin America in the areas of design, craft and art and reflect the integration of these creative genres as they converge in practice. The exhibition will reflect the nomadic character of creative careers in today's global context, and will focus on the sense of social engagement demonstrated by designers, craftspersons, and artists in the region as they navigate issues of urban growth, sustainability, ecological responsibility, and economic viability on a global stage.

Global Latin America is organized by Lowery Stokes Sims, the Charles Bronfman International Curator at MAD, working with an international Curatorial Advisory Committee which represents a range of practical, museological and academic expertise in Latin America. The members include: Regine Basha, independent curator; Marcella Echavarria, expert on art and social initiatives, Latin America and Africa; Susana Torruella Leval, independent curator, former Director of El Museo del Barrio; Ana Elena Mallet , independent curator specializing in Mexican design; Nessia Pope, independent curator, art advisor, and journalist in United States and Brazil; Gabriela Rangel, Director of Visual Arts, The Americas Society; Mari Carmen Ramirez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and Director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; and Jorge Rivas-Pérez, Curator, Colonial Art, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, designer and PhD candidate, Bard Graduate Center.

Major support for Global Latin America has been provided by the Ford Foundation and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation.

ONGOING EXHIBITIONS

Playing with Fire: 50 Years of Contemporary Glass
Through August 25, 2013

Glass has long been revered for its beauty, and prized for its particular powers of transparency and reflection. In the past 50 years, ever since a legendary workshop by Harvey Littleton first presented glassblowing as a possibility for individual artists, it has been used by artists and designers who continually experiment to take the material in new directions. This exhibition showcases the astonishing range of works that use glass, from pieces by early adaptors such as Dale Chihuly, who entered MAD's collection when he was still an emerging artist, to installations by Israeli designer Ayala Serfaty, who creates clouds of light with innovative processes. Also included are pieces by artists and designers not commonly known for their work in glass, such as James Turrell, Donald Lipski, and Ettore Sottsass.

Drawing on MAD's focus on materials and process, the exhibition themes explore the extraordinary qualities of glass as an artistic material, as well as the array of techniques, both traditional and newly developed, used by glass artists and designers. Interactive media, including interviews with the artists and videos showing the pieces being made, provide a "behind the scenes" look at the creative process. The exhibition is organized by Jennifer Scanlan, Associate Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design.

Playing With Fire: 50 Years of Contemporary Glass is made possible, in part, by the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass.

Against the Grain: Wood in Contemporary Art, Craft and Design
Through September 15, 2013

Featuring nearly 90 installations, sculptures, furniture, and vessels,Against the Grain: Wood in Contemporary Art, Craft and Designexplores the latest conceptual and technical trends in woodworking today. The exhibition, which focuses on works created since 2000, examines the ways in which artists, craftspeople and designers have incorporated modernist approaches and strategies into woodworking, including the deconstruction of vessel forms, interplay between function and form, and co-opting of woodturning and furniture techniques into sculpture.

Loosely organized around the themes of mimicry, assemblage, virtuosity and whimsy with a purpose, Against the Grain includes works by sculptors Ursula von Rydingsvard, Courtney Smith, Betye Saar, Laurel Roth, Marc Andre Robinson and William Pope.L; installation artists Gary Carsley, Sarah Oppenheimer and Alison Elizabeth Taylor; designers Maarten Baas, Sebastian Errazuriz, Elisa Strozyk and Piet Hein Eek; and studio wood artists Bud Latven, Andrew Early, Thomas Loeser and Hunt Clark.

Against the Grain is organized by Lowery Stokes Sims, Charles Bronfman International Curator and Elizabeth Edwards Kirrane, Assistant Curator and Exhibition Project Manager.

The accompanying 160-page catalogue includes essays by Sims on the conceptual framework of the exhibition; by Kirrane who chronicles how history, environmental issues and politics have predicated the use of various woods; and by Suzanne Ramljak, editor and noted expert on craft, who examines the enduring preoccupation with wood in human cultures.

Against the Grain: Wood in Contemporary Art, Craft and Design is made possible through the support of the Windgate Charitable Foundation and, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from Larry and Madeline Mohr.

Additional support is provided by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, the official airline of MAD.