Unfortunately, a nasty cold sidelined me from attending a recent panel discussion I was looking forward to at the Museum of Arts and Design.
The gathering, focusing on “Radical Legacy: From the Museum of Contemporary Crafts to the Museum of Arts and Design,” was to be moderated by Jeannine Falino.
Falino has curated MAD’s new exhibition, “What Would Mrs. Webb Do? A Founder’s Vision,” and its opening was to follow the panel.
I was hoping to catch up with Falino, a Westchester-based curator I first met when writing about “Gilded New York” at the Museum of the City of New York last year.
Oh well, I will just have to do that another time – and also make a plan to get down to MAD for the “Mrs. Webb” show.
It’s said to feature a range of objects created over the past 60 years, designed to celebrate the legacy of Aileen Osborn Webb (1892-1979), who established the Museum of Arts and Design (then the Museum of Contemporary Crafts) in 1956.
More than 100 works encompass glass, ceramics, wood, metalwork and fiber, nearly all from the museum’s permanent collection. Throughout, the exhibition explores how Webb, a daughter of a noted art collector who herself would become a noted patron of crafts, “championed the skilled maker as integral to America’s future.”
The exhibition continues, with related programming, through Feb. 8. MAD is at 2 Columbus Circle in Manhattan.
For more, visit madmuseum.org.
– Mary Shustack
