Whose Standards? Racial Equity in Craft & Design

Are our foundations our own biggest roadblocks on the path to achieving racial equity in craft and design? Institutions in the field of craft and design engender cultures of elitism through gatekeeping and hierarchies of knowledge and aesthetics, which have resulted in suffocatingly white-dominated canons and histories. There is a growing awareness that representation must be racially diverse – from artists whose works enter collections or hang on walls, to staff and faculty hired as decision-makers and thought leaders. Yet, when racial equity is discussed in these overlapping fields, tokenism abounds, and community and education are devalued in favor of established (and exclusionary) academic and curatorial benchmarks. The structures that underpin them — themselves built on entrenched modes of white supremacy — are rarely, if ever, interrogated. What do we need to embrace, give up, and change, in order to gain true anti-racist transformation within craft and design?
Part 2 follows October 14.
SPEAKERS
Alison Croney Moses, artist, craftsperson, and Program Director at the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts
Matthew Shenoda, writer, Associate Provost for Social Equity & Inclusion (SEI), Professor of Literary Arts & Studies at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and SEI Advisor to the President at RISD
Namita Gupta Wiggers, artist, curator, writer, Founding Director of the MA in Critical Craft Studies at Warren Wilson College and Director/co-founder, Critical Craft Forum
Moderator Michelle Millar Fisher, the Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston will facilitate an authentic conversation with speakers as they respond to the questions at hand.
Respondent Paul Sacaridiz, artist and Executive Director of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, will set the scene for an open audience Q&A about how racial equity has traditionally been (mis)understood in institutions of craft and design, and what a more effective and truly equitable future roadmap looks like.
The “Whose Standards? Racial Equity in Craft and Design” series is an Eliot School Salon. It is hosted by the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts, generously supported by Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and presented in collaboration with Boston Design Week.