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This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World showcases American craft like never before. Accompanying a 2022 exhibition of the same name, it features artists’ stories of resilience, methods of activism, and highlights craft’s ability to spark essential conversations about race, gender, and representation.
This book marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, the nation’s preeminent center for the enjoyment of American craft. It honors the history of the American studio craft movement while also introducing progressive contemporary narratives.
This Present Moment highlights the often-overlooked histories and contributions of women, people of color, and other marginalized communities. The volume features many of the more than two hundred recently acquired artworks to the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection.
Named after Alicia Eggert’s 2019–20 neon artwork, This Present Moment looks at American craft “in the whirlwind of now,” revealing possibilities for contemporary makers to show us a more empathetic future.
Featured artists include Tanya Aguiñiga, Nick Cave, David Chatt, Sonya Clark, Cristina Córdova, Cindy Drozda, Alicia Eggert, J. Paul Fennell, Aram Han Sifuentes, Carla Hemlock (Kanienkeháka), Sharon Kerry-Harlan, Ron Ho, Katie Hudnall, Pat Kramer, Stephen Young Lee, Linda Lopez, Roberto Lugo, Wendy Maruyama, Myra Mimlitsch-Gray, Tom Loeser, John Mascoll, Connie Mississippi, George Nakashima, L. J. Roberts, Judith Schaechter, Preston Singletary, Polly Adams Sutton, Toshiko Takaezu, Gail Tremblay (Mi’kmaq and Onondaga), Nancy Worden, Consuelo Jiménez Underwood, and many more.
The cover of this volume is printed in 50 color variations; a purchased copy may be different from the image pictured.
Mary Savig is the Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft for the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Recent exhibitions include Ephemeral and Eternal: The Archive of Lenore Tawney (2019) at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and What Is Feminist Art?(2019 at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. Savig is co-curator of the forthcoming exhibition Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women (2022) at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Nora Atkinson is the Fleur and Charles Bresler Curator-in-Charge for the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She is author of Craft for a Modern World: The Renwick Gallery Collection (2015) and co-author of the exhibition catalogues accompanying Visions and Revisions: Renwick Invitational 2016 and Forces of Nature: Renwick Invitational 2020.
Anya Montiel (Mexican/Tohono O’odham descent) is a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Montiel is a contributor for the Smithsonian’s American Indian.