Can Craft Save America

On the occasion of the United States' 250th anniversary and the American Folk Art Museum's exhibition Folk Nation: Crafting Patriotism in the United States, art historian Angela Miller, artist Sunny A. Smith, and writer Namita Gupta Wiggers revisit a pressing question: can craft save America?

From weathervanes and trade signs to quilts, carvings, and painted portraiture, American folk art has long embodied ingenuity, independence, and pride. But which objects are included in that story, whose stories they tell, and who they represent are questions the field has long struggled to answer honestly. The conversation traces the emergence of folk art as both a heritage-collecting movement and an artistic category — and its complicated relationship to national identity.

Online via Zoom. Free; registration required.