By Patti Bifulco, Patron Program Committee member

During 2022 Michelle Millar Fisher, Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts, is traveling across the US to meet craft artists and makers in their homes, studios, and communities to seek out ideas and issues driving their practice. Michelle plans to travel by train to all 48 contiguous states in search of acquisitions to enhance the MFA’s contemporary craft collection. Her goal is to frame modern-day craft as expansive, inclusive, and alive. I caught up with Michelle to talk with her about the Craft Schools Project as she was confirming appointments for the second leg of her journey that began in April. She is planning a third section for this summer.

(PB) Thank you, Michelle, for taking time to talk as you are about to leave on the second part of your journey. Can you tell me about your plans?

(Michelle). I'll be going to Delaware, Maryland, DC, Virginia, and West Virginia. I've never been to West Virginia before so I am excited to dig in there. By the end of April, I will have gone across 22 states. I'll be doing another longer train trip in the summer. There are a lot of interesting craft fairs in July and August. I plan to visit another 12 states this summer. By the end of the summer I will only have 14 to go!

(PB) How did you come up with the idea for the Craft Schools Project?

(Michelle) It was 2020, the pandemic had just begun; it wasn’t possible to know whether we would be creating exhibitions or acquiring things immediately. Six months in, I thought, “You know, I can still go out and meet artists. That's my job as a curator. I can listen to them and tell them about the collection we have at the MFA. I can look more deeply into and learn more about our collection.”

I was also inspired by a famous exhibition from 1969, “Objects USA,” the first time that contemporary craft made an impact in the US on a national level. The exhibition featured 500 artworks by more than 300 artists and traveled from the Smithsonian to 22 different venues. That exhibition was put together by two curators who drove to craft fairs across the country, and I became interested in re-creating that journey. Instead of two men in a car in a sort of a Jack Kerouac road trip, I wanted to travel, as a female curator, in a safe, and environmentally-friendly way, by train. I planned to focus both on well-known places of education, such as Haystack Mountain School of Craft or Penland School of Craft, and those that don’t have a wide reputation, like the Chicago School of Shoemaking.

(PB) What inspired you to focus on craft school education?

(Michelle) The history of studio craft is usually considered through the centers where people studied. I wanted to tell the history of craft, and its presence in the contemporary moment, through education but through a more expansive lens. My research question is, "Who is the teacher that brought you to craft?" allowing me to connect with a wider landscape of contemporary craft.

(PB) How do you select the schools to visit?

(Michelle) I do tons of research online and have stacks and stacks of books! I look at schools that have been important to makers over the past 100 years in the US. And some that have formed more recently, others that have not gotten much attention, as well as spaces—such as a studio or a community center—that are a places of making, but aren’t formally considered schools.

(PB) Tell me about your path to contemporary craft.

(Michelle) I'm trained as an art and architecture design historian. My focus is material culture: the way people and culture shape the material world around them. I was really excited to come to the MFA because it has an amazing collection of craft. It is unusual for an encyclopedic museum to have a place for a material culture scholar in their contemporary art department. The MFA was the first encyclopedic museum to have a contemporary art curator focusing on craft, starting with Jonathan Fairbanks in the 1970s.

(PB) How did your background and education lead to an interest in craft?

(Michelle) I grew up in Scotland and everyone in my very small town was involved in craft. There were many forms of craft around me. A neighbor was a glass maker and I worked in a glass factory as a teenager. I still have jumpers that people knitted for me, and animal husbandry was a big part of our community. My family had our own small farm. My mom was a single parent and she really wanted us to know the world. We had a National Trust family pass and used it to visit gardens and National Trust properties.

I grew up with a love of looking at the domestic, at peoples’ everyday lives, and understanding their stories and histories through the landscape that surrounded them, and the objects that they used and made. I went to university in Glasgow, where I met a mentor, the extraordinary scholar and curator Juliet Kinchin, who introduced me to design and craft history and I began to understand the whole discipline around these things I was interested in.

(PB) When I think of craft I think of pottery, metal work, or fiber arts. What is your definition of craft?

(Michelle). I prefer, above all definitions of craft, the one by Richard Sennett, in his 2008 book The Craftsman. He states that craft is something people do because they want to do it well for the sake of it. That could be making a vessel, a garment, coding computers; it could also be caretaking; it could be parenting. Craft traditionally has been seen through the lens of metal, clay, and fiber, the kind of materials that make up studio craft practice, but I am more interested in the care and attention that is given towards people or the material and non-human, natural world around us.

(PB) You say that caregiving is a craft. How do you demonstrate that in the museum setting?
(Michelle) In 2015 when I was a curatorial assistant at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, I researched a 1956 breast pump made by a Swedish civil engineer. My argument was that it would fit into MoMA's design collection. I was told no, but it was an interesting idea that I should pursue. I ended up working with a team of people and we eventually made an exhibition and book called “Designing Motherhood” that looks at objects and works of art focusing on the art of reproduction and care by contemporary artists and designers. Like other crafts, caregiving is undervalued. The exhibition debuted in Philadelphia and will travel to the Mass Art Art Museum, opening June 11 this year.

(PB) Let's talk about your definition of craft and craft's place in a fine arts museum. How do you tackle this in your role as curator of contemporary craft?

(Michelle) I focus less on the hierarchy of mediums and materials and more on living artists, people who are making things now. I am interested in their stories: how they have come to make their work. I argue for a holistic understanding of why people make art, and why we should care for it and about it, to put it on display in a museum. Using this approach provides us with more inclusion: it allows people to bring their own experiences.

(PB) Where do you see the contemporary craft collection heading? Do you have a plan for the future?

(Michelle) Craft at the MFA lives in many places in addition to the contemporary department. I am in constant conversation with my colleagues, such as those in the Art of the Americas, who are also collecting craft as I am, from Indigenous makers, to understand what is in the collection. Through the Craft Schools Project, we will acquire works that augment the stories we can tell with contemporary craft, and link those stories back to the histories of objects we already have. 

(PB) Do you have a favorite object in the craft collection?

(Michelle) Oh...no! But I do love Berea brooms; we just put those on display in the Farago Gallery. They come from Berea College in Kentucky and they are just fantastic. It’s a true work-study program, where students pay no tuition. As part of their work-study they can mow the lawn or work in the cafeteria, but they can also be part of the craft program to learn how to make brooms as they have been made and sold for the last 100 years.

(PB) So, the story behind the Berea brooms is an important one to tell. Do you have one last thought?

(Michelle) Yes, the story is important...it talks about how we access education. I am the first in my family to graduate high school. I was lucky to be born in Scotland, where university education is free, so I was able to go to school for free. I do think that access to knowledge is not a given; it is something that you have privilege in getting, and not everybody has equality of access, so being able to ask questions about how people gain knowledge— including craft—is part of this project. I am so grateful to be here at the MFA working with a great collection, and truly wonderful colleagues.