Materially, paper embodies this issue’s theme in many ways. It can be light in weight; it can be translucent, allowing light to pass through; and it can be swept aloft on air. These properties and paper’s versatility were explored and celebrated in the 1967 exhibition Made With Paper at Manhattan’s Museum of Contemporary Crafts (founded in 1956 by Aileen Osborn Webb, today it’s known as the Museum of Arts and Design). Organized in cooperation with Container Corporation of America, the exhibition encompassed the broad spectrum of paper’s applications, from crafts and ceremonial objects to industrial products. Many objects were suspended from the ceiling of the gallery, giving them the appearance of floating. Light and shadow were employed to fascinating effect on modular shapes of folded paperboard.
The Lightness of Paper
The Crafty Librarian looks back to the 1967 Made With Paper exhibition in New York City.
By Beth Goodrich
February 12, 2024
The Made With Paper exhibition used light to dramatic effect.
Conceptual artist James Lee Byars conducted two performative events in conjunction with the exhibition. The temporary sculpture The Giant Soluble Man consisted of 400 feet of Dissolvo water-soluble paper glued together to form a large silhouette of a man, which was laid out on West 53rd Street in front of the museum and then washed away by New York City Department of Sanitation flusher trucks. The second event, titled UP?, was held on New Year’s Day 1968 at the plaza of the CBS Building. Byars attached one end of a mile-long spool of Japanese gold paper thread to a 10-foot helium-filled weather balloon, donated by the Helium Centennial Committee to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the discovery of helium. The balloon, trailing the gold thread, was released into the sky as a “gift to the universe.”
Explore more of the archives of the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in the ACC Digital Collections.
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Image courtesy of the American Craft Council Library & ArchivesJames Lee Byars’s The Giant Soluble Man, made of Dissolvo paper.
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Image courtesy of the American Craft Council Library & ArchivesOnlookers peer through a window at the 1967 Made With Paper exhibition, which featured everything from egg cartons to funerary garments.
Beth Goodrich, aka The Crafty Librarian, has been the American Craft Council’s librarian and archivist since 2017.
View more from the archives in the ACC Digital Collections
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