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The Bard Graduate Center Craft, Art, and Design Oral History Project
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www.bgccraftartdesign.org is an online archive of illustrated oral history interviews with contemporary craftspeople, artists, and designers. The interviews consist of transcripts accompanied by photographs of the makers and their work; some also feature audio and video clips. The interviewees come from many fields: studio craft in wood, ceramics, fiber, glass, metal, and mixed media; architectural, industrial, graphic, fashion, and costume design; and sculpture and installation art. Topics discussed include background and education, aesthetics, goals, career choices, and the marketplace.
The project responds to the growing interest in craft and design history, in which oral histories have been a key resource for a growing body of scholarship. The goals of the project are twofold. One is to document, preserve and make available the voices of contemporary makers for the purpose of research. By including creators in multiple fields, the archive provides the opportunity to consider the distinctions, continuities, and fluidity among their practices and their work. The project's second aim is to share strategies for developing primary sources on contemporary craft, art and design via the practice of oral history.
The interviews have been conducted by graduate students in the seminar "Craft and Design in the USA, 1940-Present," taught by Assistant Professor Catherine Whalen, who also directs this ongoing project.
Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture
38 West 86th Street, New York, NY 10024
Source:
www.bgc.bard.edu
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