But the imprimatur of the first Objects: USA, combined with the number of contributors to this exhibition and its accompanying coffee table book (multiple galleries, artists, collectors and estates lent art for the historical section, and 14 galleries consigned art for the show), means that R & Company’s exhibition, which will run through July, has a better-than average likelihood of making that fame a reality.
“It’s a good kind of king- and queen-making opportunity,” says Pepich, whose museum held an exhibition in 2019, Objects Redux, which included pieces from the original show.
Adamson, who was the only non-commercial participant in the show’s organization, agrees. “Ours is more explicitly connected to the market than the first one,” he says. “But I don’t think [R & Company] saw it as a selling show, it’s more of a positioning show. What you could say is it’s a bit of a longer game than most [selling exhibitions].”
The Backstory
The original Objects: USA was both product of, and response to, the dominant themes of craft and design in the 1960s. America was experiencing a boom in what is now called DIY, fueled in large part by the hippie movement and a backlash against 1950s conservatism.
It was a “broad report of work produced in the 1960s—an important reference and documentation made in a significant decade,” said Paul Smith, one of the original show’s curators, in a 2019 interview on the occasion of Objects Redux. “That era was moved by young people, communal living, and the arts—many new ideas were generated.”
The dominant design trends at that time were coming from Europe, or from industrial designers like Charles and Ray Eames who created objects meant to be mass-produced.
“The big dealers were all French, and all anyone sold was French,” says Snyderman. “Jean Prouvé, Charlotte Perriand—but no one was looking at American design.” The exhibition was an attempt by Nordness and others to reassert the relevance and market for American makers. “It really did kick off a couple of decades of serious work on the part of artists, and serious collecting on the part of collectors and philanthropists,” says Pepich.
American Renaissance
Similarly, Objects: USA 2020 has been organized at a time when, broadly speaking, the very top of the design and craft market is dominated by Europeans. (The distinction between “craft,” which usually entailed a one-off object, and “design,” which could be mass-produced, has been a gray area for decades.)
“Over the course of the last 50 years, a lot of traditional craft artists have fallen to the wayside and have been forgotten about,” Snyderman says. “It’s only in the last five to 10 years galleries have started paying attention to them again.”
Even though artists such as Sheila Hicks and designers like George Nakashima now command incredibly high prices, there’s a younger generation, Snyderman continues, that has yet to break out. “No one has identified this as a movement,” he says.