Summit Retreat

As participants gathered the first morning of the retreat and talk began, there emerged an overarching interest that tangible ideas be acted upon after the retreat. Some of the participants had been part of larger craft conversations on the state of critical dialogue for the field. The attendees hoped and believed this retreat would be different and could build on much of the previous work and inquiry that has been at the center of the question of the role of craft. With this collective experience, attendees were able to move quickly toward clear objectives.

The meeting was held at the Kellogg Retreat Center outside Hendersonville and facilitated by Randy Seigel. His charge was to help participants recommend and prioritize strategies on how to advance craft in academia and the curatorial world. Using a communications matrix as a method to shape the conversation and move to a tangible result, he opened the conversation by asking what were the expectations for the retreat, and from this list the group garnered one theme that resonated as the main focus. From here Seigel shifted to the targeted audiences for this theme. The matrix format then moved to tactics for the top three audiences. Four areas were selected as top ones to explore in greater depth by two break-out groups asked to identify the strategies needed to see them to fruition. The final step in the process was a group discussion and consensus on the criteria that would best ensure a successful realization of each of the four strategies.

Step One

What questions/issues would you like to address during this retreat? What are your expectations?

• One of the longstanding concerns at retreats and conver- sations about the direction of craft is that no action is taken on what has been discovered/uncovered. There is a fear that after this weekend what is said will not make a difference.
• There is the issue of language that plagues craft. Can craft be "branded" for an acceptable definition? Can the language be sorted out? What does the definition of craft involve?
• Legitimacy of craft as a discipline is a concern. Should we examine the comfort level with the ghetto or parity in craftis it separate and equal?
• How do practitioners maneuver throughout the system? What are their strategies? Is there a program/structure in the field for communication?

Step Three

What tactics are necessary for 1) creators/makers, 2) museums and 3) academics to place craft in a larger cultural context?

1. Creators/Makers Tactics
• Create an educational program with a component for artists on how to promote their work. Universities could offer this information.
• Challenge artists to be better able to explain their vision.
• Educate studio artists concerning the context they operate within, i.e., art history/art world/specific field.
• Ensure there is cross-fertilization between the museum world and university programs.
• Capture oral history of individual artists as well as the history of the field. Include institutions such as Penland, Haystack and other community movements that provide training not available at universities.
• Develop a textbook.
• Challenge organizations, such as The Furniture Society, to review and critique artists' statements in one-on-one sessions, as well as to provide mentorship.
• Makers should offer community education and outreach.
• Create an interdisciplinary journal.
• Offer a summit to be attended by all organizations on common educational areas such as: marketing, commu- nity-service education, diversity, international exchange as well as working with academia and museums.
2. Museums Tactics
• Provide scholarly assistance for craft research by making resources available. Some suggestions include using the American Craft library, creating a Web site, networking and the need for a central resource center. There needs to be a database for artist information.
• Provide funding assistance: fellowships for researchers, information available for collectors, special assistance traveling exhibitions to make quality craft exhibitions available to general museums, and funding with quality standards attached.
• Give critical attention to exhibitions by having them evaluated by critics.
• Promote/publicize craft acquisitions into prestigious art institutions by targeting five to 10 museums for placement.

• Offer a symposium for museum directors to help educate them on craft.
• Target certain symposiums to ensure craft is represented and invite curators to attend.
• Explore ways to bring special interest groups together by offering a summit of all groups on an ongoing basis.
• Create a scholarly journal that is multidisciplinary. Extend interest by pairing this with a specific symposium or Web site.
• Set up a page in American Craft magazine where each group makes a report. This would provide a way for individual associations/organizations to know what is going on in other areas.
• Consider a for-profit craft complex.
• Create/form a committee to review photography, folk art, new media to determine best practices and suggest stra- tegy. A photography historian would be useful here.
• Execute an environmental scan of where craft is in the American museum community.
• Identify museums with best practices.
• Establish a "showcase" control museum.
• Consider mentoring between museums.
• Create a history of the movement.
• Identify opinion leaders (political) and tie into popularity CODA economic impact study.
• Curate a "hottest hits, best of the best" exhibition that would tour nationally and internationally. Pair this with a book on history.
• Look at other museums, such as successful history or ethnic museums as a model.
3. Academics Tactics
• Broaden student base from other majors, for example: have art education that includes craft classes.
• Encourage cross-pollination within the art department and promote interdisciplinary approach.
• Support Ph.D.s by providing special funding to encourage craft concentrations.
• Target five to 10 professors at institutions with a pre- existing interest in craft, such as Yale and Virginia Commonwealth, and build relationships in order to educate them as supporters of craft.

• Seek more endowed chairs in decorative arts and fellowships for such programs.
• Create a critic-in-residence program at key institutions with craft interests.
• Help university art departments bring in critics for critiques and reviews of student work in crafts.
• Explore how to educate critics.
• Create a scholarly journal to provide academic platform.
• Develop programs between critics and teachers/students.
• Look for cross-pollination between museums and academics.
• Create an endowed chair for history and criticism in contemporary craft.
• Target several educational institutions and create a separate strategy to position craft as a critical area.
• Study "American studies" model for positioning craft in academics.
• Develop strategy that will target university museums as potential locations for craft studies.

Tactics were prioritized as to those that would have the greatest impact on the field to develop specific strategies.

• Text Book/History of Craft
• Scholarly Journal
• Craft studies program in university with an endowed chair
• Placement of craft within museums

The group broke into two groups to create strategies for each of the four areas. They presented their recommendations to the full group for response and suggestions. What follows is the final list of strategies as recommended by the entire group.

Step Four

What strategies are needed to make the four main projects happen?

1. Text Book/History of Craft

   Need: Central to establishing a craft studies program is that a textbook be created to use throughout various universities.

Working Title: American Studio Craft Movement

Purpose: History of Studio Craft Movement

• It should be designed both as a textbook that could be used by art history and American studies departments, museums and libraries but also be attractive enough for collectors, artists, dealers and the interested public.
• Organized chronologically by the social context of the 20th centurynot by medium (clay, fiber, etc.).
• Include information on education/schools, support groups such as SECCA, SNAG, WPA, SHHG and American Indian Art Institute, with a timeline relative to other art or social events and a strong bibliography.
• Include CD of additional images and a Web site that could link to artists' bios.
• Selection of editor is critical as the editor would shape this as a social history and work with an editorial board to identify contributing authorsone author would not have the breadth of knowledge needed.
• Funding for graduate art history students (to further emphasis on craft among existing art history majors) should be identified to assist with research and funding for a full- time position of editor (this may take three to five years). An editorial board should be in place to check facts.
• Scholarly text with intellectual content, slanted to art but one that would appeal also to American studies, with a dedication to capturing the artists' voices.
• Include the cannon of craft history.
• In order to ensure diversity, review state textbooks to see how they deal with diversity.
• Recognize tensions in the field such as function vs. non- function.
• The technical discussion (process) should be included only when absolutely necessary.
• By acknowledging that there are histories that have been written before this text, we hope this will bring forward those works in isolation and immediately expand the scope of scholarship on craft.
• The book should be published by either a major university press or a press with a large audience.
• Use as a model such books as Craft in Britain and Studio Crafts of Australia. Work to produce book that could sell for $60 hardcover and $30 softcover.

2. Scholarly Journal

Need: In academia, where peer review and publication of research is so important to advancement and tenure, there is no vehicle for craft history and criticism. There is oral history in the field about the contribution of makers but no vehicle to capture and publish this history. Although there are medium-specific publications like the conference proceeding by the Glass Art Society and more in-depth articles by The Furniture Society, there is no one scholarly journal for craft.

• Working Title: Journal of Craft Studies: History and Criticism
• The journal should be published twice a year and be scholarly, peer-reviewed, with footnotes and bibliogra- phy for articles, and published by a university press for academic credibility. Language should be clear but not "dumbed-down."
• This journal would integrate aesthetic and technical analysis and use interdisciplinary techniques. It should include social- political relationships to craft and be intradisciplinary, res- ponding to all craft media.
• A paid managing editor is essential for oversight, production and copy editing.
• Guest editors might be contracted for specific content issues.
• Articles submitted would be reviewed by an editorial board of leaders in the field for quality control. The editorial board would identify specialists in the field for peer review of specific topics. Initial issues may require commissioned articles by authors identified by the editorial board.
• Authors should be compensated, and the author's voice should be respected.
• The scope of the journal was debatedworldwide vs. American, with most weighing in on American but rejecting "studio" as too specific for the journal.
• Further development by a core group to determine standard features, content in first two issues, and development of proposal to submit to a university press (University of North Carolina Press publishes six journals and would review proposal). Features suggested: critical book reviews, critical exhibition reviews, scholarly articles with footnotes, craft criticism, interviews to capture the verbal history of leaders/ makers in the craft field, articles from an interdisciplinary approach, e.g., written by a scientist. Other suggestions included creating guidelines by journal sections, e.g., one historical article, one international, one national, one regional, etc.

• Technical process would not be a focus unless part of a larger context.
• Publication would need ongoing financial support beyond the subscription rates (under $20 per year for the two issues).
• A link to Web site for additional color images and further reference material would keep publication costs down. Serious scholars will only write for publicationsthe Internet is not respected by academia as a conduit for legitimate research.
• The audience for this journal includes makers, academia, scholars, researchers, collectors, museum historians, anthropologists and folklorists.
3. Craft Studies Program in University with an Endowed Chair

There are few university art history programs that encourage graduate research in craft. Most museum curators have an M.A. in art history or decorative arts, and there are few Art History Ph.D.s at the university level who have completed research in the field of craft. An interdisciplinary Craft Studies Program, led by an endowed chair at a supportive university, would have an impact on both museums and universities of the future.

• The Craft Studies Program could be an interdisciplinary studies program leading to a degree or a concentration in an existing graduate program such as Humanities or Liberal Arts. Research needs to be done on how Women's Studies and American Studies became an established program.
• For the program to reach graduate students at the Masters and Ph.D. levels, a Craft Studies Program should be placed in a university that encourages interdisciplinary studies, that has existing course work which could be included in the program, as well as students interested in courses in craft history and criticism (art history, Ameri- can Studies, women's studies, cultural anthropology, folklore, humanities).
• An endowment of $2 million to $3 million would be needed for the salary of the endowed chair ($90,000 $120,000 including benefits) and fellowships to encou- rage student research and majors. The selection of the chair should include the funder, president of the univer- sity and faculty selection committee. The person would need to have skills in teaching as well as administration. The best person would personify three qualitiesa maker, scholar and academician. The person should have a knowledge of a studio craft (maybe have a MFA degree), while the Ph.D. could be in American Studies, Art History or other areas.

• The university selected for this endowed program should have resources to support research through library holdings and a university museum or a museum in the community that includes a focus on craft. A supportive community that recognizes the value of craft (economic impact, heritage and tradition of craft practice and educa- tion, community of craft artists) is also important as a resource for the success of the program.
• To select the university to receive the endowed chair and fellowship assistance, a survey should be developed and subsequent evaluation undertaken of potential universities with a comparison of the resources that would support a program. A committee of the donor and selected craft leaders would then visit the top campuses to select the university that would provide the best location for the program to thrive. States identified that recognize craft as important include California, Washington, North Carolina and New York (Hudson Valley). Suggested universities that have a support mechanism include Virginia Commonwealth, University of Wisconsin at Madison, University of Texas at Austin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Washington, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, State University of New York at New Paltz, in the Hudson Valley north of New York City. There was also a suggestion that a smaller liberal arts university might be more flexible in adopting this program.
• Although this discussion focused on graduate-level degrees because of the future careers of students at this level (curators and university faculty), a Craft Studies program at a liberal arts college at the B.A. level would provide the student population for graduate-level programs.
4. Placement of Crafts Within Museums

There is no inventory of existing craft material in museum collections. Key to this is the lack of language to catalog craft that may appear as decorative arts, crafts, sculpture, folk art. There is no scan of the health of the fieldwhy are some museums reducing emphasis on craft while new craft museums are opening? Few museum curators have a background in craft, or if they do, it is narrowly defined to one medium. There are a number of major collections that will become available in the near future. Where could they be best placed for the development of the field? The first priority should be a survey of the state of craft and development of a database with images of work in collections. Save Outdoor Sculpture is an example of a process that led to

the development of The Inventory of American Sculpture at the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, on the Internet. A small group of craft curators and registrars at craft, natural history and history museums should meet and develop language to catalog craft in collections.

The strategies that would best support craft in museum collec-tions involve: 1) acquisition support; 2) traveling exhibition support and 3) educational department support.

To assist with acquisition:

• Develop a clearinghouse with wish lists from museums to circulate to donors
• Create an online opportunity for collectors to feature work they want to donate for museums interested in adding this type work to their collection
• Collectors contact museums for advice on how to place their collection with a museum
• Create a fund that museums could apply to for acquisitions, support services like storage, photography, archiving, similar in process to the past NEA program
• Encourage naming gift to be used by craft museums To assist with traveling exhibitions:
• Quality scholarship must be included with required publications/catalog.
• Encourage co-produced/partnered exhibits combining work from each museum collection to form an exhibit that would travel to each location (only insurance and shippingno fee) the database of existing material in collections would help make this possible.
• Identify a fund to which museums could apply for logistical support (shipping, insurance and installation) for craft exhibitions.
• Encourage museums to honor late career artists in their community with a survey exhibit of the artists' work and scholarly publication that could travel. To assist with education department support:
• Create productions of educational materials, glossaries, videos that can be shared with other museums.
• Create a clearinghouse to gather together existing materials for a database of what is in collections and archives making it easier for curators to research work in upcoming exhibits.
• Fund educational programming adjunct position in partner- ship with university programs.

Outcome

After the group had completed brainstorming, the summit/retreat concluded with a schedule for the next level of work. It was decided that an executive summary (White Paper) of the findings would be completed and mailed to each participant for feedback. After incorporating this feedback into the White Paper, the document was sent to a wider audience for comments. Participants developed a list of more than 80 leaders in the field to craft who should receive the White Paper so that their comments and responses might be included in the final publication. Following the conference, initial estimates on the cost of realizing the strategies recommended were researched to be included in the final publication of the proceedings. The document will appear on the Web site of the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design (www.craftcreativitydesign.org) with the opportunity to discuss online any part of the publication.

Next Steps

In addition to the online availability of the Proceedings, printed copies will be distributed to craft collectors, organizations, publications, schools, universities and museums. The American Craft Council provided support for the editing of the journal and will receive a copy for review in their publication. Each of the four strategies will require further research and planning retreats, expanding participation beyond those who attended the North Carolina Summit Retreat. National conferences such as the College Art Association and the American Museum Association will be asked to include panels discussing these recommendations. The document can serve to support grant applications and/or the department recommendations of museums and universities, which will also promote these strategies for advancing craft in academia and the curatorial world. Edited by Lynn Jones Ennis