Curator, writer and historian, working across the fields of design, craft and contemporary art.

Work

To the Manner Reborn

Originally commissioned by Rago Auctions, January 2018.

Albert Paley's formal maneuvers replicate themselves in breathtakingly extended series, each a riff on all the others, like a physically manifested Coltrane solo.

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WritingBrilliant Move
Vanishing Point

Previously unpublished.

Nasreen Mohamedi photographs an Indian loom. If this was indeed a found composition, as appears to be the case, then the finding itself was an act of genius.

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WritingBrilliant Move
Anissa Mack at the Aldrich

Originally published with Hyperallergic, December 2017.

In 1996, at the age of 26, Anissa Mack entered every single category in the Durham Agriculture Fair. But there was a big difference between her and the other entrants, and it was not just the volume of her craftwork. Mack was making art.

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WritingBrilliant Move
Curating the Super Normal

 

 

Originally published in Art in America magazine in December 2017.

Paola Antonelli has described the MoMA exhibition “Items: Is Fashion Modern?” as a show of the “super normal.” Nearly every visitor will be wearing variations on the very objects that are on display. It is a risky project—and what it risks is being boring.

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WritingBrilliant Move
Banners Unfurled

 

 

Originally published in Disegno in December 2017.

It’s early days yet, but it looks as though the sheer awfulness of recent events is ushering in another vital age of protest design.

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WritingBrilliant Move
Tiffany's Everyday Objects

 

 

Originally published in frieze online, December 2017.

The website Scary Mommy remarks that the Everyday Objects collection “is here to confuse you and make you feel poor.” Well, yes – but no more so than a lot of contemporary art is.

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WritingBrilliant Move
Follow the Money

Julia Bryan-Wilson and I discuss our book "Art in the Making," at the second annual Windgate Research and Collections Curator Lecture, Center for Craft, Creativity and Design, North Carolina. Recorded October 27, 2016.

In the talk, we highlight one of the most important, yet least discussed aspects in the making of contemporary art: its economic footprint, examining issues such as the use of luxury materials, dependence on fabricators, and the significance of scale. Among the artists under discussion are Susan Collis, Urs Fischer, Sylvie Fleury, Damian Hirst, Jeff Koons, Jill Magid, Ai Weiwei, and Rachel Whiteread.

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LecturesGlenn Adamson
Making it in NYC

My thoughts about directing the Museum of Arts and Design, at a time when I was transitioning from the role of a critic and researcher. Recorded at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, 2 November 2014.

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LecturesGlenn Adamson
Not in Kansas Anymore

A story about the values of making, beginning with my Grandfather Art, who grew up in Depression-era Kansas. He became an aircraft engineer and skilled woodcarver, and got me interested in craft. Delivered as the Thomas J. Volpe Lecture at St. Francis College, Brooklyn, on 29 February, 2016.

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LecturesGlenn Adamson
Tracking Shot

Commissioned for the website Various Small Fires in 2013. 

A photographer’s wagon stands stock-still, arrested in the midst of a long drag across the wide-open reaches of America. Four mules – famous for their bloody-mindedness – have swerved from their trajectory, doubling back along their plodding tracks. The wagon’s U-turn is marked in a great double sweep along the ground, a double swathe of sand displaced by the wooden wheels.

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WritingBrilliant Move