I had a chance to pick a reading on my own. I chose Karin Elizabeth Peterson’s “Discourse and Display: The Modern Eye, Entrepreneurship, and the Cultural Transformation of the Patchwork Quilt.”
It details the historical transformation of the perception of the patchwork quilt. They went from being stashed in the attics of antique shops to being displayed in art museums as cultural products participating in the same design practices as abstract expressionism. The journey resulted from the work of Jonathan Holstein and Gloria van der Hoof, who used modern methods of presenting and discussing objects to elevate regard for the quilt in the art world.
It makes me wonder if the distinction drawn between art and craft should be there at all. Does it exist due to a pretentious need for importance among connoisseurs, or did these two pioneers discover that quilts were actually functioning in the same way as modern art works and had only been neglected because they hadn’t been displayed in the right way?
- It points to a larger issue in any case. So much craft is excluded because traditionally its primary role is functional. But I think it can be both.