Remembering John McQueen

Conceptual fiber artist and ACC Gold Medalist John McQueen died on July 26, 2025. He redefined the field of contemporary basketry to embrace non-functional sculpture, and explored the concepts of containment and space in his work.

Born in 1943, McQueen grew up in both Illinois and Florida. He attended the University of South Florida where he focused on sculpture and received his BA in 1971. He later earned an MFA studying fiber at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, and soon was on a trajectory of high recognition, receiving multiple Visual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1977, 1979, 1986, 1992), as well as several fellowships from the US/Japan Friendship Commission and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

McQueen’s work is decidedly conceptual rather than functional, although he would generally refer to said work not as sculpture, but as basketry. His fascination with baskets began after moving to New Mexico in the early 1970s, where he remembered observing a Pueblo artisan building a basket large enough to sit in, weaving it from the inside. This experience sparked his questioning of utility versus art; McQueen rarely employed conventional basket forms or patterned weaving techniques. “What I wanted to make was invisible, transparent architecture . . . I want to open up the interior space. I want it to be visible, exposed, the kind of containment that isn’t really contained,” he told American Craft magazine in 1999. “This all comes out of the basket tradition . . . That’s what you do with a basket. You look inside it.”

McQueen mostly used materials found on his home property in Saratoga, New York, such as willow shoots, twigs, vines, burrs, and other natural materials. He was at the forefront of contemporary basketry as conceptual art, bridging the natural and human world by incorporating poetry and word play in his constructions. “McQueen, in exploring his deep connection with nature, has redefined volume and meaning in his sculptural baskets,” says former ACC Awards Committee Member Pat Hickman (Fellow, 2005). “His frequent use of words links him—as maker—to the natural materials his hands hold as he builds complex structures.”

Through the 1980s and 1990s, McQueen received numerous solo exhibitions, installation projects, and resident artist appointments at various craft schools and universities. His work can be found in major collections, including the Museum of Arts and Design; the Detroit Institute of Art; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Minneapolis Institute of Art; and the Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. He was inducted into the ACC College of Fellows in 1994 and was honored as an ACC Gold Medalist in 2022.

John McQueen was featured in the October/November 1979 issue and the December 1999/January 2000 issue of American Craft, which can be viewed in our digital collections along with many images of his work.