TSOA Lecture Series - Michelle Millar Fisher: Craft Schools

Michelle Millar Fisher: Craft Schools: A Cross-Country Odyssey in Search of Stories of Craft Education

5:30PM, Friday, November 10, 2023
Cattle Track Arts Gallery
6105 N Cattletrack Rd
Scottsdale, AZ 85250

1 AIA CE Credit

Join MFA Boston curator Michelle Millar Fisher as she shares the story of her journey across the United States on Amtrak to visit pivotal schools and sites (including TSoA) that have shaped craft in the United States over the last century. Where is craft taught? In what ways does place matter to craft learning? And how do we access these places?

The resulting project, "Craft Schools" is a multiyear project encompassing public programs with artists across the US, artwork acquisitions to enhance MFA Boston’s contemporary craft collection, and, ultimately, a publication framing modern-day craft as inclusive and alive—inside and outside the walls of museums.

Michelle Millar Fisher is the Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Previously, she worked at MoMA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim Museum. Her work focuses on the intersections of people, power, and the material world. At the MFA, she is working on “Craft Schools: Where We Make What We Inherit” which took her on a train journey across all 48 contiguous US states. She leads an independent team on a book, touring exhibition, and program series called “Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births.” She holds an MA and an M.Phil in Art History from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and received an M.Phil from The Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY) where she is completing her PhD. She is widely published, and has received numerous fellowships.

Our 2023-24 Event Series, Shapes of Pedagogy, explores the spaces, structures and practices of experimental pedagogy in architectural education.