A Summary of Current and Upcoming Exhibitions as of January 2020
Click here for a pdf of exhibition descriptions with thumbnail images.
High resolution images are available via dropbox link below for some exhibitions.
For more high res images, please email communications@fullercraft.org
Tending the Fires: Recent Acquisitions in Clay
August 17, 2019 – May 23, 2020
Lampos Gallery
Tending the Fires: Recent Acquisitions in Clay presents recent additions to Fuller Craft’s ceramic collection. Exhibited works represent a range of processes and conceptual approaches in clay, from Cheryl Ann Thomas’s slumped, coiled sculpture to Jun Kaneko’s painterly “dango” to Steven Young Lee’s deconstructed pot. Figuration also comes into play, with strong examples by Patti Warashina, Akio Takamori, and Tip Toland. Fuller Craft Museum is proud to shine a light on the clay triumphs of these renowned ceramicists while proudly displaying the institution’s recent collecting achievements. Click here for images.
Striking Gold: Fuller at Fifty
September 7, 2019 – April 5, 2020
Stone and Barstow Galleries
In honor of its esteemed fifty-year history, Fuller Craft presents the exhibition Striking Gold: Fuller at Fifty. This invitational exhibition marks the institution’s “golden anniversary” by exploring the storied traditions, modern interpretations, and conceptual rigor of gold as an artistic material. Among the exhibition themes to be explored are avarice, vanity, power, consumption, ecology, divinity, cultural measures, alchemy, artifice, and transformation. Exhibited works will include craft media as well as fine art mediums to reflect Fuller Craft’s dual histories as both a fine art and craft museum. Curated by Fuller Craft Artistic Director and Chief Curator Beth McLaughlin, and art historian Suzanne Ramljak. Click here for images.
Human Impact: Stories of the Opioid Epidemic
September 28, 2019 – May 3, 2020
M. Tarlow Gallery
Artistic expression has long been an effective vehicle to explore critical societal issues and engage communities. Human Impact: Stories of the Opioid Epidemic aims to broaden awareness of the opioid epidemic and its ruinous effect, while offering messages of hope, resiliency, and recovery. Eleven artists working in a range of media were selected to participate in the immersive project by creating new works inspired by conversations with those deeply impacted by the substance use crisis. Click here for images.
Elliott Kayser: Year of the Pig
January 15, 2020 – January 2022
Outdoor Grounds
In 2019, the City of Boston presented Elliott Kayser’s Year of the Pig on the Rose Kennedy Greenway to celebrate the Chinese Zodiac Year of the Pig. The public art installation consisted of eight ceramic swine hidden along the length of The Greenway, leading pedestrians on a treasure hunt towards Chinatown. With the sculptures, Kayser hopes to reconnect people to a shared agricultural heritage and promote sustained environmental, economic, and community health. The Fuller Craft installation exhibits six of the original eight pigs, bringing them together in a new home.
Stephanie Cole: Secular Cathedral
January 25 – October 25, 2020
D. Tarlow Gallery
Stephanie Cole: Secular Cathedral offers an intimate view into an artist’s life through richly detailed, found object constructions. Working in a range of media – mosaic, stained glass, wood, fiber – Cole, 75, creates autobiographical artworks that are joyful and exuberant, yet poignant and introspective. The forms come alive with layers of deeply personal items collected by Cole over seven decades. From the minute to the monumental, these affecting bits and pieces symbolize the many phases of Cole’s life and the complex arc of her spiritual journey. Themes explored include family, the Earth, special milestones, identity, grief and love. Click here for images.
James Grashow: The Great Monkey Project
February 15 — September 13, 2020
Atrium Gallery
Imagine a riotous mob of monkeys, gleefully taking up residence above your heads. That’s just what you’ll find at Fuller Craft Museum’s exhibition The Great Monkey Project. Created by Connecticut artist James Grashow, this site-specific installation includes eighty life-size monkeys made entirely out or cardboard. The artist transforms the gallery into a whimsical theatre of simian forms as he elevates a throw-away material into the best kind of monkey business. Click here for images.
2020 Biennial Members Exhibition
February 8 – November 8, 2020
Community Gallery
The 2020 Biennial Members Exhibition celebrates the diversity of talents in the museum’s membership base. This biennial exhibition is an important opportunity for young, mid-career, and veteran artists to exhibit their work to the Fuller Craft Museum community. Artists both inside and outside of New England have participated in the past, showcasing stunning works of ceramics, glassware, furniture, textiles, basketry, woodturning, jewelry, and other craft-based media. In the past, the opening reception for this exhibition has been particularly successful at bringing together communities of artists who are vital to the Fuller Craft Museum mission. The juror for the 2020 Biennial Members Exhibition is Emily Zaiden, Director and Curator of the Craft in America Center in Los Angeles, California, where she has curated more than forty exhibitions focused on contemporary craft, art, and design for the Center and outside venues. Click here for images.
Serious Bling: Radical Jewelry Makeover––The Artist Project
February 15 – April 5, 2020
Keith Gallery
Radical Jewelry Makeover (RJM) is a global recycling project that spotlights gold mining’s devastating impacts and the criticality of sustainable jewelry making practices. Serious Bling presents adornments by The Artist Project, an RJM offshoot that provides opportunities for professional artists to engage with RJM by creating a series of work using their donated jewelry. Through their participation, featured artists encourage honest conversations about the difficulties facing jewelers who strive for ethical studio practices that curtail damage to the environment and human health. Click here for images.
Another Crossing: Artists Revisit the Mayflower Voyage
May 3 – September 20, 2020
Stone, Barstow, and Keith Galleries
Another Crossing: Artists Revisit the Mayflower Voyage is an international exhibition recognizing the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower crossing and its significance to American and world history. The project brings together ten artists from the United States and Europe with the challenge to use only seventeenth century technology and processes in their works. The global, cross-cultural effort includes two research trips––one to Plymouth, England and the other to Plymouth, Massachusetts––to inform the artworks’ production. Curated by craft scholar Glenn Adamson, Another Crossing is organized in partnership with the U.K.’s Plymouth College of Art and The Box (formerly the Plymouth History Centre). Click here for images.
Making History: The Art of 17th Century Boatbuilding
May 30 – November 29, 2020
M. Tarlow Gallery
Peter Arenstam, former Captain of the Mayflower II and current director of the Jabez Howland House in Plymouth, MA will work onsite at Fuller Craft to build a 13’ replica of a 17th-Century merchant sailing vessel, using traditional methods. Making History: The Art of 17th Century Boatbuilding is programmed in conjunction with the 400th anniversary of the 1620 Mayflower crossing and will feature period shipbuilding tools, related historic objects, and educational content.
Michelle Samour: Mapping Borders and Boundaries
September 26, 2020 – March 21, 2021
Atrium Gallery
Mapping Borders and Boundaries is a series of works by Michelle Samour that appeals to the artist’s ancestral past as a means of further engaging in the politico-geographic concepts of homeland, exile, and diaspora. Through cartographical repetition and reflection, Samour maps the historical (dis)possession of Palestine, ultimately decimating borders, boundaries and territorial constructs into geometric abstraction. The work critically investigates the meaning of shape/land/form within the guise of traditional Palestinian craft, including the vibrant colors of textiles and opulent Mother-of-Pearl carving.
Particle & Wave: PaperClay Illuminated
October 17, 2020 – April 11, 2021
Stone and Barstow Galleries
Particle & Wave: PaperClay Illuminated is a groundbreaking exhibition featuring 45 artists from across the globe who are redefining the potential of the ceramic arts and representing a commitment to their craft. Paper clay, sometimes referred to as fiber clay, is any clay body to which processed cellulose fiber (paper being the most common) has been added. This traveling exhibit provides historical information about the evolution of paper clay as an artistic medium as well as showcases the amazing diversity of form and expression that exists in today’s growing global community of paper clay artists.