Elisabeth Agro has established a number of firsts as the curator of the exhibit Craft Spoken Here at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Perelman Building to Aug. 12. This is the first craft show in recent time not in the hall but treated respectfully in a beautiful gallery space. In addition Agro has brought in a number of live craft practitioners to share their practice with exhibition visitors. “I am not threatened by the small c,” she says of traditional crafters and Etsy enthusiasts, so she has put the live crafters, who range from small c to big C, side by side with the internationally known artists from the collection who are in the show. Philadelphia-based artists like the ultra-conceptual needlepointer Mary Smull, embroidery artist Lance Pawling, and internationally recognized wizard of macrame Ed Bing Lee are just three of the artists taking up residence some days in the Craft Lab section of the exhibit. Agro also commissioned Philadelphia yarn bomber Jesse Hemmons to crochet cozies for the front of the Perelman building, giving the exhibit an unusually homey on-the-street presence. Agro means what she says, and here’s what she said to us.
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Craft Spoken Here
Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Perelman Building
to Aug. 12, 2012
