In the Vanguard

In the Vanguard: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, 1950-1969 traces this unique school's impact on American art during the mid-twentieth century. Accompanying a landmark exhibition, this catalogue documents Haystack's innovative pedagogy and its role as a major force in the studio craft movement. Anni Albers, Robert Arneson, Dale Chihuly, Arline Fisch, Jack Lenor Larsen, Harvey Littleton, and Toshiko Takaezu are among the artists who helped define the school's model of communally oriented, process-based learning. With deeply researched essays that detail the school's founding and first two decades, archival photographs, and images of rarely or never-before published works made at Haystack, In the Vanguard introduces readers to the important legacy of this groundbreaking institution.

Published in association with the Portland Museum of Art.

Exhibition dates:
Portland Museum of Art, Maine: May 24-September 8, 2019
Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan: December 13, 2019-March 8, 2020
"In the Vanguard: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, 1950-1969 traces the first two decades of the Haystack Mountain School of Craft's history and its pivotal imprint on the world of art and craft practice in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. The first scholarly investigation of this internationally renowned school, the exhibition, and the accompanying catalogue will feature work made at Haystack or influenced by time spent there by some of the most highly recognized names in the fields of fiber, glass, ceramics, jewelry, and graphic arts to demonstrate the school's significant role in debates about art, craft, industry, and pedagogy in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Haystack's model of brief summer sessions and changing instructors offered new ways of thinking about the status of craft as art and the nature of accessible design in the context of communally based, process-oriented learning. Anni Albers, Toshiko Takaezu, Jack Lenor Larsen, Kay Sekimachi, Arline Fisch, Robert Arneson, Harvey Littleton, Wolf Kahn, and Dale Chihuly are just a few of the artists who taught at the school between 1950 and 1969 and who helped define Haystack's radically open-ended approach towards art and craft. With approximately eighty objects assembled from public and private collections and archives, many rarely or never before exhibited in a museum, In the Vanguard will establish the substantial legacy of this remote community of makers in the art and education world at large. Archival material installed throughout the exhibition will include original correspondence, photographs, brochures, architectural models, posters, and early ephemera"--Provided by publisher.
"Churning out "great art" was not, finally, the school's main contribution. What was created during those short, sweet summers had more to do with the very conditions of creativity. It was something more mercurial and harder to pin down but -- on all the evidence presented by this show and its excellent catalogue -- very, very enviable."-- "The Wall Street Journal"
"The authors, who are both curators of American art, deliver the only complete retrospective of Haystack. No other scholarly literature exists on Haystack's foundational years or on the connection of the artists that were essential to the early leadership of the school. This publication is recommended for all academic art libraries and essential for any school with a decorative arts or a master of arts program."-- "ARLIS/NA Reviews"