persistent craft, fragile museums
Benjamin Lignel in conversation with Namita Wiggers (part one of three)
Namita Gupta Wiggers, a trailblazing curator from Portland, Oregon, is coming this fall to Oslo (18-27 September and 16-29 October) as a guest to Norwegian Crafts and Galleri Format Oslo. She comes to consult with both institutions about their forthcoming programs and strategies. She will also take part in Norwegian Crafts’ international seminar (Trondheim, 27 October), do a number of studio visits, and host professional development workshops.
“Trailblazing” is a buzzword, which suggests a winged demi-goddess leaving flaming footmarks in unexplored craft jungles. It is somewhat misleading here, as craft curation has over the last decade received an unprecedented amount of academic interest – so not an “unexplored jungle” – while craft exhibition-makers have yet to garner the sort of global attention that “star” art curators routinely receive (for better and for worse) – so no god-like status. However, few American craft curators have thought and written more than Wiggers about the challenges of craft curation, or left quite as exemplary a trail of exhibitions behind them.
When editor André Gali asked me to conduct an interview with Namita to introduce her to Norwegian Crafts’ readership, I decided that you deserved more than “an introduction” and proposed an in-depth look at Wiggers’ thoughtful and combative engagement with craft. This interview, the first of three, looks at her singular academic and professional background, and focuses on lessons learned and questions asked about craft living in – and circulating out of – museums.
norwegian crafts
conversation 1 of 3 with ben lignel
Published 22 Aug 2017 on Norwegian Crafts
norwegian crafts
conversation 2 of 3 with ben lignel
collectivity turns the elephant around
Published 26 Sep 2017 on Norwegian Crafts
Benjamin Lignel in conversation with Namita Wiggers (part two of three) Critical Craft Forum (CCF), a Facebook platform founded by Namita Gupta Wiggers and Elisabeth Agro is one of the liveliest craft forums around. It does what so few other online discussion groups have managed, which is foster respectful, but intensely critical conversations on and through craft, driven by a community of 10 000 members. The quality of those conversations – the diversity of its members – reflects and even exceeds the founders’ vision for an inclusive professional development platform: this is where people – amateurs and professionals alike - go to think craft. Elisabeth, a curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, has taken a step back from the forum’s management and ancillary projects, and now acts as advisor at large. I caught up with Namita Wiggers for a long conversation on how CCF works.
Photo: Namita G. Wiggers
The question is. . . .which craft?
Benjamin Lignel in conversation with Namita Wiggers (part three of three)
This last of a series of three interviews with Namita Wiggers is a conversation about her recent Oslo residency with Norwegian Crafts and the "European tour" it spawned: between September and November 2017, surfing on several overlapping commitments, Wiggers stayed in Oslo twice, visited Tromsø, moderated a seminar in Trondheim, spoke at another in Paris, and visited Gothenburg to serve on a PhD Committee and deliver a lecture. Whilst our conversation is informed by her encounters in those different cities with artists, curators and museum directors, we found ourselves focusing on the Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum's remarkable Sámi Dáiddamusea- project, which opens questions of access and representations for Norway-based Sámi artists as well as other artists living and working in Norway. Looking at this project, and the subsequent I Craft, I Travel Light, Wiggers discusses the agility of smaller institutions, the need to "reconstruct from within", and the role of Norwegian Crafts.
norwegian crafts
Conversation 3 of 3 with Ben Lignel
Published 08 Feb 2018 on Norwegian Crafts