Objects: USA 2020 hails a new generation of designers, artists, and craftspeople by revisiting a groundbreaking event that redefined and elevated American craft.
In 1969, the groundbreaking exhibition Objects: USA opened to crowds at the Smithsonian Institution before traveling across the country and abroad. Uniting more than two hundred artists who were inventing new approaches to artmaking by way of craft media, this revolutionary event altered the course of American art and introduced the world to some of today’s most celebrated artists.
A half-century later, Objects: USA 2020 revisits this legendary show—and its accompanying catalog, which has become a bible of sorts to many researchers—and extends its legacy by assembling fifty participants from the original exhibition and fifty contemporary artists. In their own ways, both generations radically upend the traditional methods and materials of craft to create new forms of art.
By Glenn Adamson, with an introduction by Evan Snyderman and Zesty Meyers, and essays by Lena Vigna and James Zemaitis, Objects: USA 2020 features archival photographs of the original exhibition, and of significant historical and contemporary works.
Publisher: R & Company and The Monacelli Press
Release date: October 2020
Format: Hardcover
Dimensions: 9 x 11"
Pages: 231
ISBN: 9781580935739