Center for Craft, Creativity & Design announces grant awards

Press release

From The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design at UNC Asheville:

The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design (CCCD) at UNC Asheville is pleased to announce the 2012 Craft Research Fund grant awards. This is the center’s 8th year of annual awards to advance, expand and support research about craft in the United States for both graduate and professional level scholars. This national grant program is funded by a private charitable foundation.

The goals of this peer-reviewed grant are to support innovative research on critical issues in craft theory and history; to explore the interrelationships among craft, art, design and contemporary culture; to foster new cross-disciplinary approaches to scholarship in the craft field; and to advance investigation of neglected questions on craft history and criticism in the United States.

The grant program strives to support research in American Studio craft within three grant categories – Project Grants, academics and independent scholars, Graduate Research Grants, for master’s and doctoral students, and Exhibition Research Grants for curators. CCCD Executive Director Stephanie Moore states, “The Craft Research Fund provides scholars with the encouragement and financial support necessary to contribute to the scholarly discourse focused on studio craft in the United States. The ongoing need of this grant program is argued by the growth of distinguished research that has brought the field to an unprecedented level of sophistication.”

This year’s selection committee includes: Edward S. Cooke Jr., Charles F. Montgomery Professor of American Decorative Arts and Material Culture, Department of the History of Art, Yale University; George Dimock, associate professor of art history, UNC Greensboro; Leisa Rundquist, assistant professor of art history, UNC Asheville; and Tara Tappert, principal, Tappert & Associates, Archives and American Art Consultants and former Craft Research Fund grant recipient. The committee awarded a total of $98,000 to 11 scholars.

2012 CRAFT RESEARCH FUND GRANTS

Graduate Research Grants (3 out of 13 proposals awarded)

Diana Greenwold, University of California Berkeley – $3,430
Dissertation research to explore immigrant craft practice in American settlement houses between 1884 and 1945.

Maureen Lilly Marsh, Purdue University – $8,285
Dissertation research for a cultural biography of the knit designer and writer Elizabeth Zimmerman, as well as knitting as emerging art and craft in late 20th Century culture.

Teresa Wilkins, Indiana University Bloomington – $8,285
Dissertation research to investigate the construction, use and socio-political meaning of modern feather arts of Hawaii.

Project Research Grants (6 out of 23 proposals awarded)

Nicholas R. Bell, Fleur and Charles Bresler Curator of American Craft and Decorative Art, Renwick Gallery/Smithsonian – $8,000
Editorial support for the publication that will archive the important symposium “Nation Building: Craft and Contemporary American Culture.”

Ashley Callahan, Independent Scholar – $12,500
Research toward the book, “Southern Tufts,” which will analyze the history of tufted garments made in north Georgia as it evolved from handcraft to mechanized industry.

Jonathan Fineberg, professor of art history emeritus, University of Illinois Urbana-Campaign – $5,000
Research for the first scholarly monograph on the work of Robert Arneson.

Irene Hollister, independent scholar, and Catherine Whalen, assistant professor, Bard Graduate Center – $8,000
Research toward a book on Paul Hollister, critic and historian of the studio glass movement.

Jenni Sorkin, assistant professor of contemporary art history, University of Houston – $12,500
Research for a book-length study that recovers the gendered history of weaving and its uncertain disciplinary status within the mid-twentieth century university.

Anne Stewart O’Donnell, independent scholar – $12,500
Research toward a book on the ties between the American Arts and Crafts Movement and the rise of the greeting card industry (1900-1939).

Exhibition Research Grants (2 out of 15 proposals awarded)

Carole Frances Lung, assistant professor, California State University, Los Angeles – $8,250
Support for the Camp CARPA project and exhibition (artistic reflection of DARPA) that plays with the idea of secret innovation in the crafts, exploring craft and its place in contemporary cultural practice.

Ezra Shales, associate professor, Massachusetts College of Art and Design – $11,250
Research on the development of the exhibition and book focused on Marion Fosdick and Clara Nelson, women who were exhibiting artists and influential teachers at Alfred University between 1920 and 1953.

Previous year recipients can be found at http://www.craftcreativitydesign.org/grants/craft-research-fund/. For more information, call CCCD at 828/890-2050.