Current and upcoming exhibitions, events
and professional opportunities
For DAS events, go to: https://www.decartssociety.org/upcoming-programs.
Exhibitions
We Gather at the Edge: Contemporary Quilts by Black Women Artists
Smithsonian American Art Museum/Renwick Gallery
Washington, DC
https://americanart.si.edu
Through June 22, 2025
The artists featured in We Gather at the Edge honor the Black story quilt tradition with work that envisions a more just and connected world. The Smithsonian American Art Museum acquired 35 quilts from the collection of Carolyn Mazloomi in 2023, 33 of which are featured in the exhibition. Mazloomi holds a doctorate in aerospace engineering and is an artist, curator and scholar. In 1981, she founded the African American Quilt Guild of Los Angeles, and in 1985, she founded the Women of Color Quilters Network. The exhibition highlights this recent acquisition and celebrates Mazloomi’s legacy as the founder of the Network.
The exhibition is curated by Aleia Brown, David Julian and Virginia Suther Whichard Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at East Carolina University.
Small Wonders: Beauty, Alchemy, and the Art of Enameling
Fuller Craft Museum
Brockton, MA
https://fullercraft.org
Through June 29, 2025
This exhibition features examples of enamel arts given to the museum by the Enamel Arts Foundation Collection as part of its national initiative to increase access to this genre of contemporary craft. The acquisitions represent a broad range of artistic interests, subjects and techniques. The selection includes wearable forms, three-dimensional objects, and wall-mounted plaques and panels for an overview of enameling and insights into various forms that artists have used in exploring this medium.
Small Wonders includes work by late-20th-century figures in American enameling, such as June Schwarcz, Harold B. Helwig, Joseph Trippetti, Barbara Minor, Kate Berl and Sarah Perkins. The exhibition also display works from emerging leaders: Martha Banyas, Jessica Calderwood and Zachery Lechtenberg. Artists living and working in New England include Lilyan Bachrach, Marion Lang, Rick McMullen and Barbara Seidenath.
The exhibition is made possible with the support of the Enamel Arts Foundation and the Enamelist Society.
Events
The DAS presented its awards and prize for 2023 publications in the decorative arts on November 12, 2024, in New York City. Details are in the fall 2024 DAS newsletter.
Opportunities
Let the DAS know of employment openings, grants and related opportunities in the decorative arts. Send such information to newsletter@DecArtsSociety.org for publication here or in our newsletter, as appropriate.
Michener Museum presents new lecture series
Beyond the Glass Ceiling
June 12, 2025; 7 p.m.
Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), presents Beyond the Glass Ceiling 2 as the first in the Putman Arts Leader Lecture Series of the Michener Museum of Art (Doylestown, PA).
Frelinghuysen will tell the story of the all-female artists and philanthropists who commissioned, designed and crafted the Tiffany Studios stained-glass “Garden Landscape” window from 1912, which was recently installed at the Met. Frelinghuysen has curated, published and lectured about American ceramics, glass, stained glass, late 19th-century furniture and the Gilded Age.
This Putman Arts Leader Lecture is presented concurrently with the exhibition Judith Schaechter: Super/Natural, a recent body of the artist’s work that features the debut of an eight-foot-tall stained-glass dome designed for a single viewer.
Interwoven Legacies: Women, Spirituality and the Art of Anila Agha
October 1, 2025; 7 p.m.
Anila Quayyum Agha, who often uses light and shadow to transform space, turning galleries into sacred, contemplative environments, will talk about her art and experiences. She explores themes about the roles of women, spirituality and cultural hybridity.
This Putman Arts Leader Lecture is presented concurrently with the exhibition Anila Quayyum Agha: Interwoven, which surveys two decades of the artist’s practice, including embroidery and other media.
2025 DAS award submissions now closed
Submissions have closed for the 2025 Robert C. Smith Award and Charles F. Montgomery Prize and Award of the Decorative Arts Society (DAS).
The Robert C. Smith Award recognizes the best journal article or essay from an exhibition catalogue or book published on the decorative arts in the previous year. For recognition this year, the article or essay must be in English and have been published for the first time in 2024. Both debut and seasoned authors are welcome to submit for the award. This award is in memory of Dr. Robert C. Smith, who taught the art and architecture of the United States, Spain, Portugal and South America at the University of Pennsylvania. The award follows in the tradition he established for clearly presented, original and innovative research.
The DAS presents the Charles F. Montgomery Award to the scholar(s) whose first major publication in the field of American decorative arts is judged to be the most outstanding work published in the previous year. The Charles F. Montgomery Prize is given to the most distinguished contribution to the study of American decorative arts published in the English language by a North American scholar(s) in the previous year. These awards are in memory of Charles F. Montgomery, who was a director of the Winterthur Museum, Library and Garden; curator of the Garvan and related collections at the Yale University Art Gallery; and a professor of the history of art at Yale University — an inspirational teacher, creative curator and eminent scholar.
Recipients will be announced in November 2025.
For further details about submitting works published in 2024 for the Montgomery Prize and Award, contact Remi Dyll, committee chair, at rdyll@mfah.org.
For Smith Award submission information, contact Ann Glasscock, committee chair, at aglasscock@taftmuseum.org.
Exhibitions
These events close between issues of the DAS newsletter and are listed by closing dates.
To confirm whether exhibitions will be held as scheduled or for access to virtual versions, check the websites of museums and galleries before planning to visit in person.
Recent special invitations for DAS contributors
• In May 2023, DAS contributors were invited to an online presentation about Multiple Affinities: Art Botany in British Design Reform: 1835–1870 by Sarah Alford, assistant professor in craft history and theory at the Alberta University of the Arts (Canada). The program was presented by the Canadian Society of Decorative Arts/Cercle canadien des arts décoratifs (CSDA).
The program was part of the CSDA Sundays: The Expert Series — Multiple Affinities: Art Botany.
• In January 2023, DAS contributors received a special invitation to join The Antique in Print: The Classical Past and the Visual Arts in the Long 18th Century, a free online lecture hosted by the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (New York, NY). Dr. Adriano Aymonino explored how the print culture of the “long 18th century” shaped the visual and allegorical language of Neoclassicism and placed Michel Angelo Pergolesi’s drawings and prints (Designs for Various Ornaments, 1777–1801) in context. Dr. Julia Siemon, curator of the Cooper Hewitt’s Mr. Pergolesi’s Curious Things: Ornament in 18th Century Britain, provided a brief overview of the exhibition.
• Contributors to the DAS were invited to explore the history and legacy of the Gorham Manufacturing Company by viewing the premiere of Chasing Silver: The Story of Gorham, a three-part documentary series from Rhode Island PBS Original (WSBE). The series aired in May 2021.
For more about the series, go to:
https://www.ripbs.org/blogs/bird-wire/chasing-silver-the-story-of-gorham/
Use this link for a livestream after each broadcast:
watch.ripbs.org/livestream or http://bit.ly/ChasingSilverVOD
• The DAS appreciates recent invitations from the UK Decorative Arts Society for our contributors to benefit from several online presentations:
√ Sarah Nichols presented “Glass: Venice, Venini and America.” She organized an exhibition about the relationship between Murano and America when she was chief curator and curator of decorative arts at the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, PA).
√ Matthew Winterbottom, curator of decorative arts and sculpture at the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford, UK), presented “The Colour Revolution: Art, Design, and Fashion in Victorian Britain.”
• Caitlin Condell, associate curator and head of the Department of Drawings, Prints and Graphic Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (New York, NY), and DAS former Program chair Emily M. Orr, assistant curator of modern and contemporary American design at Cooper Hewitt, presented “Underground Modernist: E. McKnight Kauffer.”
Known as the “poster king,” Kauffer was a pioneer of commercial art who integrated avant-garde style into modern life. While living in England between the two World Wars, Kauffer produced radical posters; a wide range of book covers, rugs, theatrical productions; and more. He continued his work in New York from 1940 until his death in 1954. The lecture provided a behind-the-scenes look at a newly released monograph and forthcoming exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum surveying Kauffer’s work.
