Book photos (2): Mark LaFavor/ Sculpture photo: Baltimore Museum of Art: Ryda and Robert H. Levi Collection
zoom
Right:
Made in Newark
draws on a wide variety
of sources to con jure the
manufacturing town’s
past, when it was a
haven of progressive
civic ideals and innova-
tive programs in the
industrial arts.
Below: The cover of
Ezra Shales’ book is a
detail shot of the Hugo
B. Froehlich Memorial
Art Education Window,
donated in 1927 by the
Manual Training
Teachers of Newark
to the city’s museum.
Books
Manufacturing
Civic Pride
Made in Newark:
Cultivating Industrial Arts
and Civic Identity in the
Progressive Era
By Ezra Shales
Rivergate Books, Rutgers
University Press, 2010, $50
riitgerspress.rutgers.edu
EZR A SH ALES’ HIGH-MINDED
epic challenges readers to re-
consider industrial arts, one of
the wellsprings of contempo-
rary craft. Yet
Made in Newark
is less about the things - jewel-
ry, leather goods, gas logs -
that were actually made in this
northern New Jersey city (long
before it became a symbol of
economic blight) than about
their social setting. Inspired
by civic ideals fostered a cen-
tury ago, the author examines
the innovative programs of
Newark’s Free Public Library
and the Newark Museum
Association, initiated by director
John Cotton Dana and his liber-
ated female workforce.
Dana, writes Shales, “in-
sisted that his staff see their
vocation as handicraft.” In the
hands-on operation, his librar-
ians worked a printing press,
set type, and bound books.
During Dana’s tenure, New-
ark’s nascent museum staged
some of the most experimental
exhibitions of the early 20th
century, showcasing advertis-
ing, German housewares, Japa-
nese ukiyo-e (“floating world”)
prints, and freely mixing
factory-made products with
handcraft. An exhibit on the
state’s important clay indus-
tries, for example, went so far
as to include toilets, prompting
Dana to claim that “so far, the
great contribution of American
art is the bathroom,” - a one-
liner that Dadaists Marcel Du-
champ and Beatrice Wood ran
with in promoting Duchamp’s
notorious 191
7 Fountain
(which
was, of course, a urinal).
For his part, Shales, an art
historian at Alfred University’s
New York School of Ceramics,
draws on an impressive array
of sources to weave ideas about
education, citizenship, econom-
ics, cultural pluralism, and the
role of the museum in a manu-
facturing town. The result is an
intensive and intriguing view
of the past - one that, as craft
historian and theorist Glenn
Adamson noted on the dust
jacket, “looks very much like
a future to strive for.”
-CARO LIN E HANNAH
Caroline Hannah is a design
historian in New Tork.
MD / Baltimore
Baltimore Museum of Art
Advancing Abstraction
In Modern Sculpture
to Feb. 20
artbma.org
This multi-artist
exhibition
includes one
of the earliest
examples of
David Smith’s
welding (right):
the 1933
Head with
Cogs for Eyes.
NC/Raleigh
Gregg Museum
Of Art & Design
Traces: Mapping
A Journey in Textiles
to May 14
ncsu.edu/gregg
Contemporary work from 12
artists who blend conceptual art
with the technical concerns of
the craft tradition. A sympo-
sium in conjunction with the
show, with keynote speaker
Glenn Adamson, will be held
March 24 - 26; registration
deadline is March 1.
NM / Santa Fe
Museum of International
Folk Art
Empowering Women: Artisan
Cooperatives That Transform
Communities
to May 8
internationalfolkart.org
The inaugural exhibition of the
museum’s Gallery of Conscience,
a space for dialogue about issues
facing global folk artists.
N Y /N ew York
Greenwich House Pottery
Folly
to Feb. 17
greenwichhouse.org
Known for subversive porcelain
sculpture, Beth Katleman
covered an entire wall of the
Jane Hartsook Gallery with
three-dimensional porcelain
“wallpaper” for this show.
fcb/m arn american craft 019
