Five decades ago, OBJECTS: USA toured America. The most influential craft exhibition ever staged, it included works by more than 300 artists experimenting in clay, enamel, fiber, glass, metal, mosaic, and wood. Its accompanying catalog remains the essential document of the studio craft movement, and an inspiration for contemporary art and design.

To honor this legacy and illuminate new paths forward, New York-based gallery R & Company revived the format and concept of the exhibition in 2020 and 2024, ultimately resulting in a traveling exhibition of the same title, which will travel to the Museum of Craft and Design, the Fuller Craft Museum, and the Michener Art Museum. This contemporary version of OBJECTS: USA pairs work by artists from the original exhibition with those of contemporary makers.

This exhibition is an opportunity to reflect on both how much has changed in the past half-century – with the arrival of new tools, technologies, and talents – and how much has remained essentially the same.

America, too, has changed a great deal over the past fifty years. Our recent history has been turbulent, to say the least, much as the late 1960s were. Yet, as OBJECTS: USA attests, the creative capacities of individual makers remain one of America’s most inspiring cultural wellsprings. Every one of the objects in this exhibition attests to the vitality and diversity of American craft, past, present, and future.

Above Image: The Haas Brothers, Grey Liotta, 2020. Liz Collins, Frozen, 2020. Joyce Lin, Skinned Table, 2020. Photograph by Joe Kramm, courtesy of the artists and R & Company.