Sheila Hicks & Lenore Tawney
in ‘Objects: USA 2020’, R & Company, New York
1 February – 31 July 2021
‘Objects: USA 2020’, 2020, exhibition view, R & Company, New York. Courtesy: R & Company, New York; photo: Joe Kramm
Sheila Hicks, Palghat Tapestry, 1966. Courtesy: © Sheila Hicks
‘Objects: USA 2020’, 2020, exhibition view, R & Company, New York. Courtesy: R & Company, New York; photo: Joe Kramm
Lenore Tawney, Peruvian, 1962. Courtesy: © Lenore G. Tawney Foundation
Sheila Hicks and Lenore Tawney are included in ‘Objects: USA 2020’ at R & Company, New York.
In the 1960s, the visionary gallerist Lee Nordness came up with the idea of mounting a survey focused on American craft designers. Titled ‘Objects: USA’, the resulting exhibition opened to crowds in 1969 at the National Collection of Fine Art at the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C., before traveling to 33 venues across the country and abroad.
Uniting an impressive range of established and emerging artists who invented new approaches to art making with craft media, such as Anni Albers, Wendell Castle, Wharton Esherick, Sheila Hicks, Doyle Lane, George Nakashima, and Art Smith, this revolutionary event altered the course of American art and introduced to the world some of the 20th and 21st centuries’ most celebrated artists. It led to an explosion of object makers at a time when the distinctions between fine art and design were not as entrenched as they once were.