Continuing through January 17, 2027
“Objects USA” showcases the work of 61 artists working in the craft tradition, expanding and updating a historic exhibition staged under the same title in 1969 at the Smithsonian. The new show argues for a coherence between successive generations of artists drawing a line that tells us “things changed after this happened.”
That original “Objects: USA” exhibition established the studio craft movement as a viable and important new amalgamation of craft practices with experimental approaches that up until then had been associated with the fine arts. Decoration and functionality were no longer the only qualities that defined the field. Twenty-two of the artists included in the current show took part in the original 1969 “Objects USA.”
Near the entrance we encounter a canny curatorial decision, Wharton Esherick’s “Hickory Hammer Chair” (1938) juxtaposed with Joyce Lin’s “Skinned Chair II” (2022). The pairing tacitly lays out what can be learned when comparing similar works separated by 84 years. At first sight Esherick’s is a straightforward, rough-hewn wooden chair with an interwoven leather seat that has aged into dignity. The wood used was recycled from old hammers, adding a frisson joining together issues of work and tools, but also a premonition of conceptual practices in which an object reveals the ways and means of its own creation.
It’s appropriate to consider Esherick’s piece alongside Lin’s, which also features a chair that hides a secret about how it came to be. Splayed on the wall are all the parts of a wooden chair that she has carefully taken apart and rehung, skeleton-like, flattened and framed. Seated off to its side is a chair painted garishly in red and gold. It is in fact not really a chair at all, but a metal armature onto which Lin has attached the skin of the original framed chair which she has painstakingly preserved. Much like Escherick, she understands how sculpture can make the world new for us through deconstruction.
Artists in “Objects USA” who innovate with wood continue to surprise throughout the show. Norman Teague’s “Sinmi Stool” (2015), made of bent birch plywood and walnut over a rocking chair base (with a leather seat by Yohance Lacour), resembles an ironing board bending over to touch its toes. Sinmi is a Yoruba word meaning “relax,” and the work thus suggests a leaning posture rather than sitting or standing, thus striking a friendly and casual mode. It’s a witty charmer, as is Nik Gelormino’s “Flat Car” (2024). Carved out of a single four-foot-wide block of wood, it might have driven right out of a late painting by Philip Guston. Kim Mupangilai’s “Bina Daybed” convinces us that we are looking at a piece of furniture before we realize it is a sculpture with stone carved bolster pillows and straw headrests, full of hard-edged elegance.
References to art history are another recurring theme. Roberto Lugo’s Greek amphora, “Prisoner Sequence” (2002), includes all the right ancient design elements but substitutes a sequence of images of a contemporary chain-gang prisoner swinging a pickaxe in lieu of a warrior swinging a sword. In 2009 Anna Von Martens made a suite of her signature quilt-like works inspired by historic portraiture. Two of them, directly influenced by Diego Velásquez, are “Philip IV’s Aura, after Velázquez” and “Philip IV of Spain’s Aura, after Velázquez,” which reinvent history painting as figurative abstraction. Her invocation of the Spanish master via aura photography that has been dyed and stitched on cotton, is not directly recognizable, but stands on its own as a 21st century microdose-like spooky portrait.
Steven Young Lee’s pale blue “Maebyeong Vase” lies on its side, its mouth open at about 45 degrees. At the bottom of the vessel we see that two webbed feet have magically sprouted, while its butt sits on an overturned cup. A barely discernible motif of crane imagery can be seen, ghostlike, on the surface. These Korean vases are described as S-shaped, and Lee has exaggerated that shape to suggest a transformation of the object into a crane.
Complex surface treatments characterize several of the strongest works. Cody Hoyt’s “Landscape Drawing/Vessel” (2026), composed of inlaid clay on ceramic in a vase-like four-sided object, features a bouquet in black clay set against an off-white background. A tension leaps across the room between the complexity of the intricate and jagged arrangement of flower petals across the surface and the aimless perfection of the inlaid imagery. Amber Cowan’s assemblage “Ecco to the Bridesmaid: I Know Not What Has Happened to Your Pod” (2022) mounted above a shelf shouldn’t work, what with its garish green and aqua palette and kitschy glass doodads. Somehow its sheer exuberance and multifarious surfaces come together memorably.
Jay Sae Jung Oh’s “Salvage Series Wall Organizer” (2024) combines a high degree of energy, originality and craft. It is an exercise in wrapping found objects in the manner of Judith Scott of Creative Growth. However, Oh uses thin strips of leather cord to skillfully wrap each item in a whirlpool of brown swirling lines that are recognizable as the original object hidden within. Everything is attached to a board and hung on the wall. Included are a gasoline canister, a toy spaceship, a stool, and other objects that cumulatively form a roller coaster for the eye. With this iteration of “Objects USA,” timed to coordinate with America’s 250th birthday, Oh’s standout piece indeed embodies e pluribus unum.
