George Lindemann Journal - "Boxed In, With Room for Creativity" @nytimes by Ted Loos
For the first show he conceived as director of the Museum of Arts and Design, Glenn Adamson is thinking inside the box.
The box is a large yellow crate made by the Brooklyn packing and art transport company Boxart, built for a bulbous sculpture by Wendell Castle. The crate is part of “NYC Makers: The MAD Biennial,” opening on Tuesday. While Mr. Castle’s sculpture is tucked inside, it is not officially part of the show.
“I like this idea that a fine artist and a crate maker can all be seen on a level playing field,” Mr. Adamson said. “It’s a powerful idea, and a radical idea, for a museum.” Though biennials are not exactly news, Mr. Adamson’s exhibition features a fleet of objects and installations that may be getting through the door of a major cultural institution for the first time: bottles of whiskey, a jar of handmade candy and scratch-and-sniff wallpaper, for starters.
Mr. Adamson is attempting what he calls an ambitious “relaunch” of the museum’s mission, which has been focused on “making sure craft is an equal part of the art world,” he said. “Now we’re looking at what the skilled maker brings to the larger world around us.”
The new biennial format spotlights work by 100 citywide “makers” — the trendy term for creators of any kind — and it includes a cross-disciplinary group of people within New York City. Some are famous, like Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk and Yoko Ono, while others have yet to gain renown, like the wallpaper company Flavor Paper. One of the sweaty-smelling papers in the show is supposed to evoke “the scent of creativity of 100 makers,” said Jake Yuzna, the biennial’s curator.
Lest anyone doubt the of-the-moment feel to the maker concept, President Obama proclaimed June 18 a National Day of Making.
There are objects in the show that would not be out of place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Whitney Museum of American Art, like two crumpled glass sculptures by Jeff Zimmerman. But the show, which Mr. Adamson said he conceived during his first week on the job last fall, is part of his effort to create a more accessible museum. He added: “A good rule for me is that an 8-year-old should be able to get quite a lot out of everything. It’s not that all the content has to be totally introductory, but there should be something for them to hang on to.”
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That approach makes some people in the art world nervous: Could a level playing field devalue the more traditional artworks on view?
“It’s a concern,” said Zesty Meyers, an owner of the design gallery R & Company, which lent the Zimmerman sculptures to the show. “But if it’s done right it could be the best show in the world.”
The biennial organizers are taking pains to create the feel of an open studio where artisans ply their trades in person. Mr. Adamson said it would have the air of a festival. In August, for example, Martinez Hand Rolled Cigars will demonstrate their rolling process; some of their cigars are on view for the duration of the exhibition.
In searching for previously unheralded creativity, the museum — which was founded in 1956 as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts and moved to 2 Columbus Circle in 2008 — has tapped in to a populist strain of the current cultural moment. Candidates were nominated by more than 300 New York City cultural leaders including the artist Dan Graham, the choreographer Bill T. Jones and the fashion designer Reed Krakoff. Then a 10-person jury led by the design entrepreneur Murray Moss, including Mr. Adamson and Mr. Yuzna, made the final selections.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has made frequent comments about the city’s richness beyond Manhattan, which is well in evidence in the museum’s biennial’s representation from Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island and especially the maker-hub of Brooklyn.
“It coincides with what the mayor has been talking about: New York City as a five-borough place,” Mr. Adamson said.
A subtheme of the show is the vital role of the artisan in what Mr. Adamson calls New York’s “creative economy,” and some outside groups have tried to quantify at least part of that impact.
Last month, the nonprofit group Center for an Urban Future released its analysis of figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Its report, “New York’s Design Economy,” looked at the topic in the broadest sense, from fashion to landscaping to industrial work.
“We want to highlight parts of the economy that have flown under the radar, and design is a great example of that,” said Jonathan Bowles, executive director of Center for an Urban Future.
The group reported that, according to the bureau, the number of professional designers in New York was 40,340 in 2013 and had bounced back significantly since the recession but had not reached the levels of 2008, when the number was 44,400.
New York is still the country’s undisputed design hub, and more to the point of the museum’s show, Brooklyn and Queens were found to be leading the growth. The number of design firms in Brooklyn doubled between 2003 and 2012, from 265 to 532.
“A show like this sheds light on the suppliers — specialized people who normally don’t fit into an existing category, but they’re artisans making things,” said Rosemary Scanlon, dean of the Schack Institute of Real Estate at New York University. Ms. Scanlon produced three extensive reports on the economic impact of the arts: in 1983 and 1993, as an economist for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and in 2007, as a consultant for the Alliance for the Arts.
In organizing the biennial, which will tackle a new city in two years, Mr. Adamson also has an eye on the museum marketplace and positioning the museum as a distinct brand. He mentioned the more famous biennial across town at the Whitney as a point of reference.
“The kind of spiky, theoretical programming is being done so well at other spaces that I think we can become a point of entry for people,” Mr. Adamson said. “Look where we are: the corner of Central Park. I would like people to experience MAD as a fantastic adjunct to a day in the park.”
Some of the makers who are usually behind the scenes are surprised and delighted to find themselves in the spotlight.
“When I got the first call from Jake I thought it was, well, not exactly a scam, but I was a little skeptical,” said Daniel Hanford, the director of Boxart, which works frequently with the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art.
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and most of the time no one gets to see our work,” Mr. Hanford said. “It feels great.”