Writer for June: Glenn Adamson

Glenn Adamson has chosed to write about an image of Martin Davis. You can see the image here:

Martin Davis

Box Table 2
2005

As a frequent writer on furniture, both historical and contemporary, and
someone mainly versed in art and craft in the USA, I took immediately to
this image of Martin Davis's simply titled Box Table. It manages to
sneak in references (at least to my American eye) to Donald Judd's
reductive, Minimalist forms; George Nakashima's overtly craftsy
butterfly keys; and maybe even Garry Knox Bennett's overbuilt trestle
tables. As Davis notes, it's only the particular strength of the
hardwoods he is using that allow him to pull off this combination of
allusions. The box form seems to levitate above a set of intersecting
planes, pierced by a set of wooden 'stitches' as if that somehow kept
the thing together (Nakashima's tables feature the same
pseudo-functional gesture but aren't self effacing about it). All
together, it's an object that respects the traditional confines of a
craft genre and is prepossessed about the decisions that went into its
own making--a lot to say for any object.

Read Glenn Adamson's article about Gord Peteran here.

Glenn Adamson, PhD Summary Curriculum Vitae Present position Head of Graduate Studies and Deputy Head of Research, Victoria and Albert Museum

Education
Yale University: Ph.D. in Art History (2001); MA in Art History (1996)
Cornell University: BA in Art History (1994)

Previous work experience
Curator, Chipstone Foundation July 2000-present
Curator for an independent decorative arts-oriented foundation. Responsibilities included permanent and temporary exhibitions at the Milwaukee Art Museum; teaching in the art history department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; consulting on acquisitions.
Curator and Researcher, Yale University Art Gallery Spring 1998-June 2000
Was a member of the curatorial team for the exhibition "Woodturning in North America, 1930 to the Present." Also assisted in the planning and organization of the YUAG's reinstallation of its American art galleries.

Selected Exhibitions Curated
"Puritan Classicism: Joined Cupboards of 17th-Century Massachusetts"
"If These Pots Could Talk: Collecting 2,000 Years of British Ceramics"
"The Red Thread: Studio Fiber Art from the Milwaukee Art Museum Collection" (2002)
"Skin Deep: Three Masters of American Inlay" (2003)
"Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World" (2003)
"Slipware Traditions" (2004)
"Masterpieces of American Art from the Detroit Institute of Arts" (facilitating curator, 2004)
"The Playful Search for Beauty: Eva Zeisel" (facilitating curator; 2004)
"Tea Table, Coffee Table" (2005)
"Made in Japan: The Postwar Creative Print Movement" (facilitating curator; 2005)
"The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America, 1880-1920: Design for the Modern World" (facilitating curator; 2005)
"About Face: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the African-American Image" (2005)
"Gord Peteran: Furniture Meets Its Maker" (forthcoming in 2006)

Courses taught
"Objects Since 1945: Sculpture, Craft and Design" (as lecture) "Objects Since 1945: Sculpture, Craft and Design" (as seminar), "American Pastoral," "American Furniture," "Design in Theory," "Exhibition Practicum: Slipware Traditions," "Object Lessons: Case Studies in Material Culture;" "Reading British Design, 1600-1800," "Problems in Modern Craft" 

Selected Publications
Gord Peteran: Furniture Meets Its Maker (Milwaukee Art Museum, 2006). Forthcoming.
"The American Arcanum: Bonnin and Morris Porcelain and the Alchemical Tradition," in Ceramics in America 2006 (forthcoming).
Book Review of Neil Kamil, Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics, and Material Life in the Huguenots' New World (The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts; Spring-Summer 2006). (forthcoming)
"A Doctrine of Handy-Crafts," in What Makes a Great Exhibition? (Philadelphia: Pew Exhibitions Initiative, 2006)
"Mannerism in Early American Furniture: Connoisseurship, Intention, and Theatricality," in American Furniture 2005.
"Terese Agnew: Portrait of a Textile Worker." American Craft , 2005.
"Paradise Lost," in The Body Double (Toronto: Ontario Crafts Council, 2005)
Exhibition review of "Right at Home: American Studio Furniture," at the Renwick Gallery, in John Kelsey, ed., Studio Furniture 3: Furniture Makers Exploring Digital Technologies (Furniture Society, 2005).
Book Review of Robert D. Mussey, Jr., The Furniture Masterworks of John and Thomas Seymour . Studies in the Decorative Arts (The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts; Fall-Winter 2004-2005).
"Eugene Deutch: Chicago Modernist Potter." American Craft , 2004.
"High Craft Along the Mohawk," in American Furniture 2004. Co-authored with Robert F. Trent, Alan Miller, and H. Mack Truax.
Book Review of Adam Bowett, English Furniture 1660-1713: Charles II to Queen Anne . In American Furniture 2003 (Milwaukee: Chipstone Foundation/University Press of New England, 2003).
Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/The Milwaukee Art Museum, 2003). Main author and editor. The Architects' Journal (UK) noted in its review of the book that it displayed "a level of scholarship and editorial skill rare in design books from any source."
"The Politics of the Caned Chair," in American Furniture 2002
" The Very Man for the Hour: A Toussaint L'Ouverture Portrait Pitcher," in Ceramics in America 2002 . (Co-authored with Rob Hunter, Jon Prown and Katherine Hemple Prown.)
"Studio Furniture: The Last Decade," in The Inside Story: Contemporary Studio Case Furniture (Madison, WI: Elvehjem Museum of Art, 2002).
"Let's Get Uncomfortable: The Next Moment in Studio Furniture." Furniture Studio Two (Free Union, VA: The Furniture Society, 2001)
"Circular Logic: Woodturning Since 1976." Essay in Woodturning In North America Since 1930 (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 2000).
"Fine Distinctions: Museum Collecting of Studio Craft in the Twentieth Century," in An Inaugural Gift (Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, NC, 1999).