This week, the brilliant Alexandra Schwartz considers pay equity in arts institutions, craft traditions’ roles in art history, the re-evaluation of feminism post-Hillary Clinton, cultural determinism in fashion, the parallels between podcasting and curation, and if a selfie can ever be considered craft art.
Alexandra Schwartz, Ph.D., is Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, Craft, & Design at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, and Adjunct Professor in the MA Program in Art Market Studies, SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology. Her exhibitions include Garmenting: Costume as Contemporary Art at MAD (2022); 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2022–23); Ed Ruscha: OKLA at the Oklahoma Contemporary (2021); As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler Paintings at The Clark Art Institute (2017), and Come as You Are: Art of the 1990s (Montclair Art Museum and national tour, 2015-16), all with scholarly catalogues. She is the author of and Ed Ruscha’s Los Angeles (MIT Press, 2010) and the co-editor of Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, 2010). Schwartz previously held curatorial positions at The Museum of Modern Art and the Montclair Art Museum, and teaching positions at Columbia University, Fordham University, the University of Michigan, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among other institutions.