This Present Moment

A highly illustrated, important volume inspired by the way craft artists have united during the COVID pandemic and engaged in artistic conversations about race, gender, and inclusivity.

During the summer of 2020, the space outside the Renwick Gallery - the Smithsonian American Art Museum's dedicated museum for contemporary craft and decorative arts - became home to a new discussion about racial justice on Black Lives Matter Plaza. The curators at the Renwick Gallery felt the need to align themselves with what was going on right outside the Gallery's door, the organizing rationale for understanding the objects presented in this volume, many of which are new acquisitions.

The title is taken from Alicia Eggert's 2019-2020 eponymous neon work, and the 85 objects in the main plates section lead the reader from the idea of shelter, through layers of expanding spaces to the vast expanses of the universe. The volume looks at contemporary American craft \"in the whirlwind of now\" revealingpossibilities for contemporary makers to respond to a more empathetic future.

About the Authors

Nora Atkinson is the Fleur and Charles Bresler Curator-in-Charge for the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She is the author of Craft for a Modern World: The Renwick Gallery Collection (2015) and a co-author of the exhibition catalogue accompanying Visions and Revisions (2016). She lives in Washington, DC.

Anya Montiel is curator of American and Native American women's art and craft, a joint position between the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian. Montiel has been a writer for the Smithsonian’s American Indian magazine since 2002 where she writes about contemporary Native American life and art.

Mary Savig is the Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum. Recent exhibitions include Ephemeral and Eternal: The Archive of Lenore Tawney (2019) at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin; and at the Smithsonian Archives, What is Feminist Art? (2019).

133 colour illustrations