Fiber Art and the Hierarchy of Art and Craft, 1960–80

Abstract

“Fiber Art and the Hierarchy of Art and Craft, 1960–1980” both explores the artistic, historical, institutional and extra-aesthetic forces affecting the formation of the fiber movement and evaluates the curatorial strategies of Mildred Constantine and Jack Lenor Larsen to negotiate the hierarchy of art and craft in order to elevate fiber as a medium of “high art.” The analysis considers the emergence of the category of fiber art in the 1960s and 1970s, the cultural contexts in which fiber or textiles were utilized in the period, strategies of transcending the hierarchy of art and craft, and other relations of dominance and subordination that defined fiber's marginality in the hierarchy of the arts and shaped the responses of artists, critics and curators to aesthetic boundaries.