Pathmakers

“Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft and Design, Midcentury and Today,” on view at the MAD, New York, considers the contributions of women to modernism in postwar visual culture.

Polly Apfelbaum, Handweavers Pattern Book installation, 2014. Textiles: marker on rayon, silk, velvet, ceramic beads on embroidery thread. Courtesy of the artist and Clifton Benevento. Photo Andres Ramirez

Featuring more than 100 works, Pathmakers focuses on a cadre of women – including Ruth Asawa, Edith Heath, Sheila Hicks, Karen Karnes, Dorothy Liebes, Alice Kagawa Parrott, Toshiko Takaezu, Lenore Tawney and Eva Zeisel – who were influential as designers, artists and teachers, using materials such as clay, fiber and metals in innovative ways.

Significantly, the group came to maturity along with the Museum of Arts and Design itself, which was founded in 1956 as the center of the emerging American modern craft movement.

**Top**: Polly Apfelbaum, Handweavers Pattern Book installation, 2014. Textiles: marker on rayon, silk, velvet, ceramic beads on embroidery thread. Courtesy of the artist and Clifton Benevento. Photo Andres Ramirez. **Above**: installation view of “Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft and Design, Midcentury and Today,” 2015. Photo Butcher Walsh. Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.

“Pathmakers places women at the center of the midcentury modernist narrative, and makes a powerful case for the importance of craft and design media as professional pathways,” stated Glenn Adamson, MAD’s Nanette L. Laitman Director. “Founded by a woman and with half of its
collection representing works by female artists, MAD continues to champion the inclusion of women in the narrative of art and design history, along with other groups that have traditionally been marginalized.”

The exhibition also highlights contributions of European émigrés, including Anni Albers and Maija Grotell, who brought with them a conviction that craft could serve as a pathway to modernist innovation. Parallels between women creating work in Scandinavia and the United States are emphasized by the inclusion of important Scandinavian designers such as Rut Bryk, Vuokko Nurmesniemi and Vivianna Torun Bulow-Hube.

“We aim to expand the historical view of the postwar period, to showcase important artists and designers, and to introduce names that have been overlooked,” said exhibition curator Jennifer Scanlan.

The legacy of the midcentury women is conveyed through a section of the exhibition that presents works by contemporary female artists and designers that reflect and expand upon the work of the earlier generation. International and US-based artists and designers featured in this section include Polly Apfelbaum, Vivian Beer, Front Design, Christine McHorse, Michelle Grabner, Hella Jongerius, Gabriel A. Maher, Magdalene Odundo and Anne Wilson.