The professional studios that introduce artists to the medium of hand papermaking play a crucial role in fostering an environment where they can create works that are technically and conceptually diverse, innovative, and consistently flawless in craftsmanship. Most importantly, these works remain true to each artist’s unique concept and vision. This collaborative relationship between artists and master papermakers is a central focus of the exhibition. Master papermakers, printers, and collaborators serve as catalysts, enabling the creation of these remarkable works. Their skill, commitment to collaboration, and passion for the medium are evident throughout the pieces on display. Accompanying seminal works from Dieu Donne, exceptional collaborations from various publishers, including the Brodsky Center at PAFA, Experimental Workshop Garner Tullis, Gemini G.E.L. Magnolia Editions, Mixografia, Pace Editions, Shark’s Ink, Tandem, Two Palms, Tyler Graphics, and Universal Limited Art Editions are showcased. Widely recognized as a pioneer in the field, Dieu Donne continues to play a vital role in the evolution of creating handmade paper art with leading contemporary artists. It has been my privilege to work professionally with many of these artists and studios over the years, and I am honored that the exhibition debuted at the Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Dieu Donne, and will be hosted by the Asheville Art Museum, the Chazen Museum of Art, and the Parrish Art Museum.

Cynthia Nourse Thompson, Co-Curator
Professor and Director of Curatorial Affairs, Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art
Kennesaw State University School of Art and Design

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Curated by Kathryn Koca Polite, organized by the Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Sponsored in part by Illinois’ College of Fine and Applied Arts, the International Fine Print Dealers Association, and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.

Support at the Chazen provided in part by the Anonymous Fund.

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Insistent Presence is organized into three sections exploring the presence and absence of the human body. The first section, “The Body in Society,” explores how identity is shaped through isolation, proximity, and interaction among figures depicted in groups or individually. The second section, “The Artist is Present,” examines artists’ use of their own bodies as their primary artistic medium. Works in the final section, “The Absent Body,” remain resolutely non-figurative. Accessories and accoutrements prompt the viewer to form a mental image of the body. Each section in Insistent Presence highlights 21st-century ways of being in the world and invites us to reflect on ourselves, our relationships, and the worlds we inhabit.  

Artists represented in the exhibition span the continent of Africa, from Tunisia and Egypt to Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Mozambique and South Africa. Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania are also among the countries represented. The works are drawn from the Chazen Museum of Art’s Contemporary African Art Initiative, a five-year project supported by the Straus Family Foundation that built upon several contemporary African artworks the Chazen collected in the late 1990s. The exhibition opened at the Chazen in 2023. 

This exhibition, which is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, is organized by the Chazen Museum of Art and presented by the Palmer Museum of Art.  The Palmer Museum of Art’s presentation of the exhibition is overseen by Amanda Hellman, Director, with support provided by the Michael J. and Aimee Rusinko Kakos Dean’s Chair in the College of Arts and Architecture. 

Above: Nana Yaw Oduro (Ghanaian, b. 1994) PHILIP, 2019, inkjet print, 19-5/8 x 29-1/2 inches. Sara Guyer and Scott Straus Contemporary African Art Initiative made possible by the Straus Family Foundation, 2021.28.3

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Chazen Museum of Art Names Anne E. Stoner as Winner of 2026 Panczenko MFA Prize

Now open, Infrastructure Bodies/Injury Systems: An Exhibition by Anne E. Stoner uses municipal surveillance video from the past year to explore the American governmental climate   

MADISON, Wis. – The Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW–Madison) has announced artist Anne E. Stoner as the 2026 Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize winner. The UW–Madison MFA candidate uses video and sound to illustrate the American governmental climate in “Infrastructure Bodies/Injury Systems: An Exhibition by Anne E. Stoner,” opening April 10 at the Main Gallery located on the second floor of the Memorial Union.

In the multi-channel installation, Stoner pairs surveillance video of political events that have occurred in Midwest cities such as Chicago and Minneapolis during the past year with data sonification from that footage. She uses the pixel movements of people in the video to create audio that illustrates the volume and intensity of motion. The exhibition also incorporates the voices of people who have been injured during protests in the United States. Stoner will use directional speakers to spatially isolate the sound in the exhibition, offering visitors various experiences as they explore each area of the gallery.

“I would describe the current governmental climate as calculated and frightening. It is no doubt we are living in unprecedented times. This project and my work in general aim to shed light on political practices that may seem acceptable or effective on the surface but in fact have dark and dangerous histories,” said Stoner.

“Infrastructure Bodies/Injury Systems” engages “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” an executive order signed in July 2025 that directs federal agencies to maintain urban safety through law enforcement, involuntary treatment for people living with mental illness and drug addiction and the removal of street encampments. Stoner says the executive order is reminiscent of the ugly laws enforced between 1867 and the early 20th century that criminalized the public presence of people with visible diseases and disabilities. The ordinances also targeted poor people and called upon law enforcement to fine, arrest or institutionalize people who were deemed unsightly. While enforcement waned by the mid-20th century, the ordinances remained in place until the mid-1970s.

Stoner hopes the exhibition will become a space where visitors can reflect on the American governmental climate of the past year and become familiar with the ugly laws and contemporary AI surveillance practices. “By peeling back the layers of the recent executive order, the exhibition reveals the unkind, systemic marginalization that is the foundation of these policies,” said Stoner.

The Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize is offered annually by the Chazen Museum of Art in collaboration with the UW–Madison art department and provides a unique professional development opportunity for award winners. The selected artist is featured in a solo exhibition and gains experience throughout the entire process, from collaborating on layout and design to marketing and program development. The 2026 exhibition will be presented by the Wisconsin Union Directorate Art Committee. The winning artist is selected by an outside juror and receives an honorarium. This year’s juror was Tyler Blackwell, curator of contemporary art at the Speed Art Museum in Kentucky.

“Anne E. Stoner’s project connects past systems of exclusion to contemporary infrastructures of monitoring and control. Today’s AI-driven surveillance extends these histories, embedding old ideas about order and acceptability into new technologies that claim objectivity while producing harm,” said Blackwell. “Stoner’s work is ultimately generous and affirming. By transforming surveillance footage into sound and amplifying the voices of those injured or disabled through protest, she reclaims tools often used to erase accountability. Her work reminds us that even in a hyper-monitored world, connection is still possible, and that listening carefully to one another can open space for dignity, care and collective imagination.”

Stoner’s interest in disability studies and sociopolitical issues, as well as her previous work exploring the streetscape and accessibility, inspired “Infrastructure Bodies/Injury Systems.” She often considers the dangers posed in the street by cars, curbs, crosswalks and other elements that could cause critical injury, effectively deeming victims unfit for public spaces. Her work at UW–Madison focuses on social participatory art and data-centered artwork.

“The Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize provides a valuable opportunity for the Chazen Museum of Art to partner with UW–Madison’s art department to offer students hands-on exhibition experience. We look forward to sharing Anne E. Stoner’s work with the broader campus community,” said Amy Gilman, director of the Chazen Museum of Art and senior director for the arts and media at UW–Madison.

Stoner appreciates the wealth of opportunity available to winners of the Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize, including the experience of working with the team at the Chazen as well as the Wisconsin Union Directorate Art Committee, a student-led organization committed to presenting innovative exhibitions and related programming, and Memorial Union Main Gallery where her exhibition will be presented. She has also enjoyed the challenge of creating an exhibition for large, diverse audiences.

“Receiving the Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize and working with an institution of this scale has been a transformative milestone. Beyond the recognition, opportunities like this are vital because they protect the non-commercial heart of the arts. Not every creative pursuit is inherently financially viable. This platform allowed me the freedom to spend months on a complex sound installation and allowed me to experiment, focusing on the pursuit of the work itself,” said Stoner. “The arts remain one of the few spaces where free speech and expression aren’t entirely bound by historical precedent. This freedom allows us to respond to the socio-political climate in real-time.”

The Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize is supported by funds from the Russell and Paula Panczenko Fund for Excellence in the Visual Arts.

About the Artist

Anne E. Stoner, photo Mark Kosobucki

Anne E. Stoner is a sound artist and sonic researcher whose work criticizes political systems of disability, injury, pollution and death, questioning the role of the human body as a member of a national and global infrastructure in the 21st century. Her work brings about and coalesces studies in bodily complexities, human geography, psychogeographies and contemporary methodologies in ethnographic archiving and queer anthropology to create a practice with an empathetic methodology that challenges visual standards within contemporary artmaking and scholarship. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, with her first solo exhibition displayed at the Francis Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery (Saratoga Springs, New York) in 2025. Stoner’s sound and writing can be read and listened to in Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, Global Performance Studies Journal and The 2025 Struer Tracks Sound Biennial Almanac.

Stoner holds an undergraduate Master of Arts in Music from Edinburgh College of Art at the University of Edinburgh and a Master of Arts in sound from Northwestern University. In 2023, she began working toward an MFA in 4D studio art, focusing on sound and time-based media at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

About the Wisconsin Union Directorate Art Committee
The Wisconsin Union Directorate Art Committee is dedicated to bringing novel and challenging exhibitions to the Wisconsin Union and advancing visual arts in the Madison community. This student-run committee manages every aspect of exhibitions, from artist selection and installation to art education and marketing. The Wisconsin Union Directorate Art Committee is responsible for programming exhibitions in the Wisconsin Union gallery spaces and strives to recontextualize standard approaches to the visual arts through collaborative and innovative exhibitions. For more information: union.wisc.edu/art

Images: “Infrastructure Bodies/Injury Systems: An Exhibition by Anne E. Stoner” (detail), the 2026 Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize winner.

Infrastructure Bodies/Injury Systems: An Exhibition by Anne E. Stoner

The 2026 Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize exhibition is presented by the Wisconsin Union Directorate Art Committee with the support of the Chazen Museum of Art.

Artist Anne E. Stoner’s statement

“To be a pedestrian is to be under suspicion.” —Rebecca Solnit

Infrastructure Bodies/Injury Systems is a counter-surveillance that explores the contemporary state of the American street as cyclically disabling and criminalizing. Who is welcome in the street, and how must they move and present to be accepted as “orderly”? How are disablement, injury, and death intertwined with political resistance?

This project presents an assemblage of municipal surveillance videos, which I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act from cities in the Midwest. These videos capture an array of street moments from the last twelve months that document the American governmental climate. From these videos, I have developed a pixel-responsive sonic programming system, turning digital human movement into sound, coupled with voices from those injured in protests in the United States.

Infrastructure Bodies/Injury Systems responds to the American sociopolitical state, particularly the 2025 executive order, “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.” The exhibition claims this order as a twenty-first century Ugly Law, a series of ordinances that criminalized unsightliness, loitering, and vagrancy in nineteenth-century American cities, particularly Chicago. The project criticizes new AI-powered surveillance systems—which listen for “dangerous” noises, visually track for disorder, and sort for bodily traits (skin color, gait, height)—as furthering the power of this contemporary Ugly Law.

How does a politicized human body sound within a governmental system, and how must we pay attention in order to hear it?

Juror Tyler Blackwell’s statement

Across her practice, Anne E. Stoner works with sound, surveillance, and collective voice to ask urgent questions about who is allowed to appear in public space—and under what conditions. Her work does not speculate about the future. It begins with what is already here: existing footage, existing technologies, existing lives shaped by systems that quietly watch, sort, and judge. Stoner’s commitment is to telling real stories, not inventing them, and to using the image of now as a way to bear witness.

At the heart of her practice is a belief in the power of sound. Where contemporary surveillance collapses bodies into patterns and probabilities, sound restores texture and humanity. Breath, vibration, rhythm, and hesitation carry emotional and political weight. They remind us that bodies are not abstractions, and that listening—truly listening—can be a form of care, resistance, and solidarity. In Stoner’s work, sound refuses efficiency. It lingers. It accumulates. It asks viewers to slow down and stay present.

Stoner’s projects are deeply informed by disability history and scholarship, particularly the long policing of bodies deemed disruptive or out of place in public. Drawing from Susan M. Schweik’s 2009 The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public, her work connects past systems of exclusion to contemporary infrastructures of monitoring and control. Today’s AI-driven surveillance extends these histories, embedding old ideas about order and acceptability into new technologies that claim objectivity while producing harm.

Yet Stoner’s work is ultimately generous and affirming. By transforming surveillance footage into sound and amplifying the voices of those injured or disabled through protest, she reclaims tools often used to erase accountability. Layered voices form a collective presence—one that resists isolation and insists on shared experience. Her work reminds us that even in a hyper-monitored world, connection is still possible, and that listening carefully to one another can open space for dignity, care, and collective imagination.

About the juror:

Tyler Blackwell

Tyler Blackwell (he/him) is a curator, arts administrator, and museum leader from Fort Worth, Texas. He is currently the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Speed Art Museum. Specializing in queer and historically underrepresented artist practices, post-1960s abstract painting and sculpture, and postcolonial strategies in video and photography, he has worked in university, civic, and encyclopedic art museums and kunsthalles.

From 2018 to 2022, he was the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Associate Curator at the Blaffer Art Museum, a leading contemporary art institute on the campus of the University of Houston. Blackwell previously held positions at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, where he supported permanent collection acquisitions and the organization of wide-ranging exhibitions, commissions, programs, and performances. He was named a “2026 Curator to Watch” by the Observer.

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How Much A Heart Can Hold invites the viewer to explore Petah Coyne’s work as a multifaceted and long-running conversation about the complexity and creativity of women.

It is divided into three sections: Women’s Work, Women’s Relationships, and Women Obscured & Transformed. Originally intended as an exhibition organizational structure that avoided the pull of a chronological arrangement, it is now clear that all the works reside in each of the categories, and now these three threads weave and plait together as part of a more nuanced understanding not only of Coyne’s oeuvre, but also how a single artist’s work is intertwined and in dialogue with friends and creatives both near in time and space, and long past or far afield.

Petah Coyne: How Much A Heart Can Hold was organized by the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Generous support for this exhibition was provided by Stephen and Pamela Hootkin, and the Anonymous Fund. The Lowe Art Museum’s presentation was made possible by Beaux Arts Miami; the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; the Funding Arts Network; the City of Coral Gables; Galerie Lelong, New York; the Lowe Advisory Council; and Lowe Members. It was sponsored in part by the State of Florida through the Division of Arts and Culture and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Insistent Presence now on view at the Carlos presents more than forty works of sculpture, painting, ceramics, printmaking, and photography by twenty-three contemporary artists living and working on the African continent and in the diaspora.  Insistent Presence examines how artists have reimagined the human figure as a lens to pose questions about social and political histories, contested identities, and the possible future of how we relate to one another. The exhibition title was inspired by renowned African art scholars and curators Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu. These scholars point to the enduring usefulness of depicting the human figure for artists keen on affirming the humanity of Africans and those critical of postcolonial governments. In this exhibition, artists provocatively explore the human body through juxtapositions of those political concerns with emotions and passions of everyday lived experiences.

The exhibition and its accompanying publication are organized into three discrete sections along the notions of the presence and absence of the human body. The first section, “The Body in Society,” explores how identity is shaped through isolation, proximity, and interaction among figures depicted in groups or individually. These artists are concerned with the human form as an avenue for expressing the intersections and ruptures between privately and socially constructed identities. The second section, “The Artist Is Present,” examines artists’ production strategies of using their own bodies as the primary medium. These artists share their personal histories through theatrical performances, photography, and sculpture.  Works in the final section, “The Absent Body,” remain resolutely non-figurative. Accessories and accouterments prompt the viewer to form a mental image of the body. Each section in Insistent Presence highlights twenty-first-century ways of being in the world and invites us to reflect on ourselves, our relationships, and the worlds we inhabit. The works expand the museum’s permanent collection while also strengthening the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s collaborative relationships with living artists and contemporary organizations on the African continent.

Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection was organized by The Chazen Museum of Art at The University of Wisconsin–Madison and curated by Guest Curator Margaret Nagawa. Generous support for this exhibition was provided by the Straus Family Foundation.

This exhibition has been made possible in Atlanta by the generous financial support of the Charles S. Ackerman Fund, the Carlos Museum Endowment, the Carlos Museum National Leadership Board, the Mellon Teaching and Training Endowment, and the Carlos Museum Permanent Collection Conservation Fund.

Above: Nana Yaw Oduro (Ghanaian, b. 1994), PHILIP, 2019, inkjet print, 19 5/8 x 29 1/2 in., Sara Guyer and Scott Straus Contemporary African Art Initiative made possible by the Straus Family Foundation, 2021.28.3

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Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within is on view at the Chazen Museum of Art September 8–December 23, 2025. The exhibition is the first nationally touring retrospective of Takaezu’s work in twenty years. Takaezu taught at UW–Madison 1954–1955.

This retrospective aims to trace the evolution of her practice and reframe Takaezu as one of the most compelling and conceptually innovative American artists of the last century. It will serve as an in-depth consideration of the range, depth, and development of Takaezu’s work, with a particular focus on the worlds she conjured within individual forms, and in stunning environmental installations. The title of the show is meant to evoke the vital sense of resonant space expressed in Takaezu’s work, and allude to her assertion that the most important aspect of her closed forms is “the dark space that you can’t see” — the hidden worlds within.

Of Okinawan heritage and born in Hawai‘i, Toshiko Takaezu was a groundbreaking twentieth-century abstract artist most celebrated for her prolific output of expressively glazed “closed form” ceramic sculptures that ranged in scale from palm-sized works to immersive sculptural environments. Seeking to harness the expressive potential of both abstract painting and sculpture, Takaezu radically reimagined the vessel form as a pliable three-dimensional canvas, and as site for limitless experimentation. Takaezu’s phenomenal hybrid practice, which was informed both by her cross-cultural heritage and deep appreciation for the living environment, also included innovative work in painting, weaving, and bronze-cast sculpture. She often displayed these varied works alongside and in productive dialogue with her ceramic works to create captivating environments. Similar to her friend Isamu Noguchi, Takaezu’s boundary-crossing practice defies limiting art historical categorization and stands as an endlessly creative and inspiring model for making and being.

The retrospective is organized by The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, with assistance from the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation and the Takaezu family. It is co-curated by art historian Glenn Adamson, Noguchi Museum Curator Kate Wiener, and composer and sound artist Leilehua Lanzilotti. The exhibition was conceived and developed with former Noguchi Museum Senior Curator Dakin Hart. The show first opened at The Noguchi Museum featuring more than 200 works from private and public collections around the country

ABOUT TOSHIKO TAKAEZU
Toshiko Takaezu (1922–2011) was one of the twentieth century’s greatest abstract artists. Gifted with prodigious drive and vision, she combined inspirations from her own cultural background with currents from contemporary painting and sculpture, arriving at a unique expressionist idiom. Takaezu was born in Pepeʻekeo, Hawaiʻi to Okinawan emigré parents, and received her early training in ceramics, weaving, and sculpture in Honolulu, as a student at the University of Hawaiʻi, Manoa (1948–51) with teachers including Claude Horan. She continued her studies at the Cranbrook Academy of Art (1951–54) under the instruction of Maija Grotell, who would become a mentor of profound influence, as well as Marianne Strengell, and Bill McVey. In her early career Takaezu expanded the possibilities of the vessel, exploring multiple spouts and lobed forms, and made plates that were essentially canvases for freeform composition. Though made using traditional pottery techniques of wheel-throwing and glazing, the innovative ceramic works which she soon developed, and for which she is best known—the closed forms—are best understood as sculptures, or perhaps as paintings-in-the-round. Through her expressive brushstrokes, dynamic glazes, exploration of sound, and trust in chance, Takaezu imbued clay with a life that existed far beyond when it emerged from the kiln. Across her seven-decade career, Takaezu also pursued media apart from ceramics, including large-scale textiles, acrylic paintings, and cast-bronze sculpture, which extended her vocabulary of vivid abstraction. During her lifetime, Takaezu was also a profoundly influential teacher and mentor, who trained generations of younger artists at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, The University of Wisconsin, the Cleveland Institute of Art, and Princeton University, and other institutions. Her legacy lives on in these students and apprentices, and above all in her own work, which both exemplifies and transcends the ideals of modernist ceramic art. Another testament to her legacy, Takaezu was named a Living Treasure of Hawai‘i (1987), received the Gold Medal Award from the American Craft Council (1994), and received the Konjuhosho Award (2010), conferred by the emperor of Japan on individuals who have made significant contributions to Japanese society, as well as many other accolades.

RECEPTION AND LECTURE

The standing-room-only lecture by co-curator Glenn Adamson was followed by a reception in the Mead Witter lobby Oct. 8, 2025.

From left: Katherine Alcauskas, Chazen chief curator; artist Martha Glowacki; and Lillian Sizemore, mosaic artist and Marjorie Kreilick scholar.

Former Chazen curator Maria Saffiotti Dale and Sarah Anne Carter, professor and executive director of the Center for Design and Material Culture (CDMC)

Glenn Adamson, co-curator of Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within presents a lecture on the artist. The lecture was sold out with all auditorium seats filled and overflow guests watching simulcasts in the Mead Witter lobby and the object study room.

Works from Takaezu’s Star Series on view in the back Rowland gallery.

Museum visitors fill the Rowland galleries after the Glenn Adamson lecture.

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Corpus: an exhibition by Anamika Singh grows out of Singh’s film Sheetla, which follows the Hindi language daily journal Jan Morcha and its role in reporting the highly contested desecration of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, Faizabad in 1992. The exhibition interrogates the way that archaeology is instrumentalized as a strategy of control and nationalism. Singh’s work underscores the close resemblance between remnants of urban destruction and debris of architectural construction. Corpus asks, “What does it mean for symbols of power and progress to be forged from the debris of violence?”

The Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize is offered annually by the museum in collaboration with the UW–Madison Art Department and offers a unique professional development opportunity for award winners. The selected artist is featured in an exhibition at the Chazen and gains experience throughout the entire process of the project, from collaborating on layout and design to marketing and program development. Selected by an outside juror, the winning artist also receives an honorarium. This year’s juror was Lumi Tan, a curator and writer based in New York City.

Anamika Singh, photo by Agya Salas

About the artist

Anamika Singh (b. India 1995; active New York City and Madison, Wisconsin) is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher whose work contends with the contested histories produced by transfers and flows of power and violence. Singh received her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art and is currently an MFA fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where she is working on Corpus, her forthcoming body of work. Singh has taught at Rutgers University-Newark and given guest lectures and talks at institutions such as Architectural Association, The New School, and The Cooper Union. Singh has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, and her work has been exhibited internationally. Singh will begin her doctoral research in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University in the fall of 2025.

Curator and writer Lumi Tan, photo by Isabel Asha Penzlien

About the juror

Lumi Tan is a curator and writer based in New York City. She is the curator for the upcoming 2026 Converge45 citywide exhibition in Portland, Oregon and the curator for Frieze Focus New York. She recently served as the Curatorial Director of Luna Luna, a revival of the world’s first art amusement park created by André Heller in 1987 and exhibited in Los Angeles in 2024. Previously, she was Senior Curator at The Kitchen, New York, where she organized exhibitions and produced performances with artists including Kevin Beasley, Meriem Bennani, Gretchen Bender, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Autumn Knight, Moor Mother, Sondra Perry, The Racial Imaginary Institute, Tina Satter, Kenneth Tam, Danh Vo, and Anicka Yi. Tan has also held positions at the Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain Nord Pas-de-Calais, France; Zach Feuer Gallery, New York; and MoMA/P.S.1, New York. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Artforum, Frieze, Mousse, Cura, and numerous exhibition catalogues. She was the recipient of 2020 VIA Art Fund Curatorial Fellowship, and has been visiting faculty at School of Visual Arts, New York, Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and Yale School of Art.

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The Crafted World brings selections from this rich and rarely loaned collection to a broader public, including many objects never before seen except in Esherick’s home and studio. Detailing the artist’s career from his early woodcut illustrations for books by members of the avant-garde literati to his revolutionary re-imagining of furniture forms as organic sculpture, works will be presented in thematic vignettes that invite visitors into Esherick’s story and bring the essence of his creative world into the gallery.

From the exhibition catalogue:

“THE CRAFTED WORLD OF WHARTON ESHERICK takes you into the visionary landscape of one of the most innovative and influential artists of the twentieth century. A master craftsman and sculptor, Esherick created a world that blurred the boundaries between art and functionality and pushed the limits of wood and design…”

“The exhibition [and accompanying publication] explore themes that are present in the home and Studio, with their rich array of artworks. They also connect Esherick’s artistry to the broader intellectual and creative worlds of which he was an integral part. From sculptural furniture to breathtaking architectural spaces, each image in this publication tells a story of unwavering commitment to craftsmanship and artistic  expression, as well as a deep connection to the medium of wood. Numerous moments of transformation are visible. Most striking, perhaps, is the overall evolution of Esherick’s style, from early works characterized by prismatic shapes and intricate details to later organic and free-flowing designs.

Wharton Esherick, The Race, 1925. Painted wood on walnut base, 6 3/4 x 30 3/4 x 8 1/2 in. Wharton Esherick Museum Collection. Photo by Eoin O’Neill, courtesy of the Wharton Esherick Museum.

“Esherick’s innovative approach to form and function has inspired generations of artists, designers, and makers. His career unfolded as conventional boundaries between fine art and functional craftsmanship were being questioned. Esherick had rich answers to offer. His unique approach to blending form and function resulted in a body of work that challenges categorization. Because of his iconoclasm, Esherick’s work resonates not only with enthusiasts of traditional woodworking, design, and “useful” craft, but also with those who see in his work the very essence of expressive creativity.

“The spaces that Esherick created for himself, in which he lived and worked, offer evidence of one of his core beliefs: that our surroundings can and should reflect our individuality and enhance our lives in meaningful ways. Esherick saw the tactile nature of wood, carefully shaped by his own hands, as a principal means of fulfilling this goal. In his Gesamtkunstwerk—or “total work of art”—the warmth and intimacy of the spaces he created invite us to consider how the intimate objects of everyday life may be imbued with beauty, ritual, and comfort.”

—Julie Siglin and Thomas Padon

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