Craft Happenings: Fall 2025

Upcoming exhibitions and events across the country.

By Jon Spayde
August 6, 2025

Fall 2025

Free To Read

Detail from Judith Schaechter’s stained glass installation

Photo courtesy of Christian Gianelli

Judith Schaechter’s 2025 stained glass installation Super/Natural (detail) will be on display at the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco, along with other works by the 2014 ACC Fellow.

August Openings

Art of Devotion: The Santos de Palo Tradition of Puerto Rico
Mint Museum Randolph, Charlotte, North Carolina
August 2, 2025–June 1, 2026

Santos de palo are wooden folk sculptures of Catholic saints, carved in Puerto Rico since colonial times. Originally adorning home altars of isolated peasant farmers without access to churches or priests, they came to be influenced by African and Indigenous modes of expression. The 200-plus works here belong to Puerto Rico–born, Charlotte-based collectors Nitza Mediavilla Piñero and Francisco Toste Santana.

State Fairs: Growing American Craft
Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
August 22, 2025–September 7, 2026

Seed art, butter sculpture, narrative textiles, and more appear in this celebration of the distinctive craft culture of state fairs. With live demonstrations and 240 artworks dating from the 19th century to the present on view, this first-of-its-kind exhibition brings together artists and 4-H clubs from 43 states and tribal nations to evoke the energy and spectacle of the fairgrounds within a museum setting.

Elizabeth Catlett: “A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies”
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
August 30, 2025–January 4, 2026

Boldly delivering messages of resistance to oppression, Catlett (1915–2012) created prints and sculpture inspired by the militant art of Mexico (her home beginning in 1946), German Expressionism, and African forms. The 100 works here underline what organizers call “the significant role this revolutionary artist and radical activist played in her time and the influence she still has today.”

September Openings

American Pottery Festival
Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
September 5 –7, 2025

Ceramic artists from across the country will gather for this confab, the Clay Center’s annual fundraiser. Attendees will be able to examine works by 24 artists, chosen to reflect a diversity of approaches, aesthetics, materials, and cultural backgrounds. The organizers promise plenty of opportunities to interact with the artists through talks, workshops, demonstrations, and informal chats.

CraftTexas 2025
Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, Texas
September 6, 2025 –January 31, 2026

Abraham Thomas, curator of modern architecture, design, and decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was the juror for this exhibition of craft made in the Lone Star State. Artists in clay, fiber, glass, metal, wood, and found and recycled materials will display their work in an exhibition that, say the organizers, “strives to broaden the understanding of contemporary craft.”

Transformation 12: Contemporary Works in Wood
Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
September 19, 2025 –January 17, 2026

The emerging and established artists working in wood in this show are finalists for Contemporary Craft’s Elizabeth R. Raphael Founder’s Prize. They’ll display a broad range of techniques, including intarsia, marquetry, woodturning, carving, and sculptural construction. All the works, say the organizers, demonstrate intricate detailing and push against traditional technical and conceptual boundaries.

Nancy Callan and Katherine Gray: The Clown in Me Loves You
Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts
September 20, 2025 –March 1, 2026

In what the Fuller calls “a sculpted fusion of kitsch and catharsis,” West Coast artists Callan (Seattle) and Gray (Los Angeles) collaborated for four years on a body of work that explores how we understand and experience the world of clowns and clowning. The pieces on display, executed with venerable Venetian glassblowing techniques, reflect childhood memories of clowns, the mythology of the circus, personal and political associations with the entertainers, and more.

Green ceramic candlestick with yellow flowers

Photo courtesy of Northern Clay Center

Candlestick by Ariana Henizman

October Openings

Gee’s Bend Airing of the Quilts Festival
Boykin, Alabama
October 4, 2025

Held in and around the Welcome Center in this mecca of Black quilting, the festival is a lot more than a marketplace. Displays, workshops, guided tours, and food on offer make it a celebration of the Gee’s Bend makers, their monumental contributions to American art, and the history of protest, perseverance, and pride in their art and their identity.

Folk School 49th Annual Fall Festival & 100th Anniversary Celebration
John C. Campbell Folk School, Brasstown, North Carolina
October 4–5, 2025

Impressed by the craft-focused “folk high school” concept that had helped revitalize rural Denmark in the mid-19th century, Midwesterner John C. Campbell and his wife, Olive, went into Appalachia to found an American version. This centennial celebration will offer work by more than 200 craftspeople, craft demonstrations, live music and dance, food, and more.

Judith Schaechter: Super/Natural
Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, California
October 4, 2025–February 8, 2026

In this show, first featured at the Michener Art Museum in Pennsylvania, one visitor at a time will be able to enter a gorgeously colorful and complex stained glass structure by Philadelphia artist Schaechter—a three-tiered “cosmos” that invites contemplation of our outer and inner worlds. Accompanying it are a number of her other works, which draw on natural elements to create what organizers call “biophilic beauty.”

Photo courtesy of Image courtesy Dominic Episcopo

Detail from Judith Schaechter’s 2025 stained glass installation Super/Natural, which will be on display at the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco starting October 4, 2025.

Wunderkammer: The Collection of Susan Beech
Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, California
October 4, 2025 –February 8, 2026

The 17th- and 18th-century Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities, was a private collection of marvelous objects, reflecting the owner’s sensibility, including curiosity about new worlds being opened by exploration. In this exhibition, visitors will get a glimpse of San Francisco Bay Area collector Beech’s expansive, sometimes surreal sensibility, as reflected in nearly 100 works from her sumptuous and eclectic assemblage of art jewelry. Learn more about Beech on page 58.

Clay as Care: Ceramic Art and Wellbeing
The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
October 9 –December 31, 2025

The work of artists who address healing, rest, and resilience—including Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Adebunmi Gbadebo, Ehren Tool, and Maia Chao—will anchor this show, which, the organizers write, will focus on “ways in which care manifests in ceramic art and how viewing art and working with clay can promote personal and communal health.”

Collidoscope: de la Torre Brothers Retro-Perspective
Cafesjian Art Trust, Shoreview, Minnesota
October 17, 2025–January 31, 2026

Einar and Jamex de la Torre blend ancient Mesoamerican, Mexican folk art, and Baroque motifs to create elegantly outré glass sculptures that allude to pop culture while also boldly voicing themes of social justice. This wide-ranging, nationally touring show is organized by The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino.

Dyani White Hawk: Love Language
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
October 18, 2025–February 15, 2026

This survey of the Lakota artist’s work—including paintings, sculpture, video, beadwork, quillwork, glass mosaic, and more—documents 15 years of her efforts to foreground Lakota artistic forms and cultural teachings while reminding audiences of the legacies of settler colonialism and oppression. A highlight is her series of paintings enhanced with shimmering beadwork, entitled Wopila|Lineage.

Photo by Rik Sferra, courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery

A detail of the beaded panels that comprise Visiting, 2024, by Dyani White Hawk (Siċaŋġu Lakota). The 10-foot-tall sculpture will be on display in Love Language.

Water’s Edge: The Art of Truman Lowe
National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC
October 24, 2025 –January 2027
This is the first major retrospective of the versatile Ho-Chunk artist, bringing together 50 pieces—28 of them from the museum’s collection—including charcoal and pastel drawings and minimalist sculptures made of organic materials such as willow branches and feathers. The works reflect memories of the Wisconsin woodlands, Native cultural traditions, and perspectives on the place of humanity in nature.

Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective
Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
October 19, 2025–February 7, 2026

“I’m interested in what the material can do,” renowned artist and educator Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) once said. Her work—ranging from intricate wire sculptures to bronze casts, paintings, prints, and public works—bears out this experimental mindset. Here some 300 pieces from her six-decade career paint a definitive portrait of an avant-gardist who loved natural forms. Learn about the book on page 65.

Sarah Tector: Overgrown
Alma’s Gallery & Shop, Richmond, Virginia
October 25–November 29, 2025

The Raleigh, North Carolina–based artist’s jewelry-making practice is rooted in concern for the environment—she’s careful to use only recycled metals and responsibly sourced gemstones. In this show, she’ll present some 150 delicate, expressive sculptures and wearable artworks that depict plant life, crafted from sterling silver and found objects.

Photo by Sarah Tector

Sarah Tector’s silver and wood Ikebana, 8 x 12 x 12 in.

Cosmic Artifacts, Donté K. Hayes
Greenwich House Pottery, New York, New York
November 6 –December 19, 2025

Hayes’s work exists, he says, at the intersection of the legacy of the African diaspora and contemporary popular culture. His imposing clay forms, painstakingly decorated with repeating motifs, are inspired by a galaxy of influences: Afrofuturism, superheroes, African art objects, textiles, fashion in the era of colonialism, soundwaves, hair, and science fiction.

Constellations: Contemporary Jewelry at the Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas
November 9, 2025 –May 3, 2026

This survey of more than 350 works by designers from around the globe brings together established masters and up-and-comers. The beauty on display includes artistry in metals and precious stones, of course, but also pieces made from paper and plastic bags. Other surprises: crowns formed to look like cardboard and brooches that resemble pieces of toast.

Dripping Earth: Cannupa Hanska Luger
The Joslyn, Omaha, Nebraska
November 15, 2025–March 8, 2026

These clay forms—augmented with willow branches, blankets, felt, used sports equipment, and other traditional and untraditional materials—reach backward to the earth-molding, lodge-building traditions of the artist’s Mandan and Hidatsa forebears. The clay sculptures and works in other media on display join Luger’s ongoing series, Future Ancestral Technologies, which imagines new Native narratives in the spirit of speculative fiction.

Photo by Donté K. Hayes

Donté K. Hayes’s ceramic Balance, 2024, 10.5 x 11 x 12 in.

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