The 2016 closure of the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon, was a major blow to the region’s creative community.
Founded in 1937 as the Oregon Ceramic Studio by a group of women volunteers to support regional artists during the Great Depression, it eventually grew into a museum in Portland’s Pearl District, housing a significant 1,300-object collection of mostly midcentury ceramics and offering Oregon’s craft community historical context for their work and a forum for new critical engagement.
Now, a decade later, dozens of objects from that collection can be viewed again at their new home 50 miles south of Portland.
Handmade Revolution: Craft in the Pacific Northwest opened on June 13 at Willamette University’s Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem, Oregon. The museum, which had been collecting crafts from the region since its founding in 1998, took over stewardship of MoCC’s collection in 2021. Now, in this exhibition, the museum can present a more complete view of the history of the region’s craft traditions and techniques.
“Craft became a major new focus within our program, whereas it really hadn’t been that way before,” says Hallie Ford curator Jonathan Bucci. “We wanted to connect with the supporters of the [MoCC] and let them know that that material is here now, and we wanted to share it with everyone, since it had been in storage for many years at this point.”
Patrick Horsley's stoneware Purple Teapot from 1998 won an award from the Oregon Potters Association and will be on display at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, 20 x 16 x 4 in.
