This summer, a hermetic sculptor’s work goes on view in New Orleans, a fabulous collection of folk art has its first museum airing in Boise, and in California, we get a look at the less polished backsides of those picture-perfect still lifes.

CA / Fresno
Fresno Art Museum
Fiber Art Master Works
to Aug. 28  
Twelve artists, chosen for their innovative approaches to fiber, show works in tapestry, embroidery, weaving, crochet, quilting, and appliqué. Scale is key: Seventeen of the works are huge, filling the walls of two galleries, while right alongside are eight small embroideries in their own petite space. Artists in the show include Lia Cook, Ramekon O’Arwisters, Michael Rohde, and Joan Schulze. 

CA / Pomona
American Museum of Ceramic Art
Dirk Staschke: Nature Morte
to Sep. 18
From the front, Dirk Staschke’s recent works appear as still lifes, elegantly framed. From the back, viewers can see the lumpy, bumpy clay from which those lovely images are formed. TMI about the creative process? Other pieces represent lavish stacks of delicately detailed desserts, again nudging viewers to ponder: What is enough, and where does excess begin?

ID / Boise
Boise Art Museum
Folk Art: The Drew and Katie Gibson Collection
to Jul. 24
Guided by their passion for art and their own eclectic taste and interests, the Gibsons have assembled a fascinating array of objects, both historical and by living artists. This is the collection’s first museum showing; some of the 55 or so works, in mediums as diverse as metal and dough, are gifts from the couple to the museum.

LA / New Orleans
Ogden Museum of Southern Art
Arthur Kern: The Surreal World of a Reclusive Sculptor
to Jul. 17
Former Tulane University art professor Arthur Kern has spent the past 30 years out of the public eye, making fanciful molded-polyester sculptures of people and horses that filled tables and shelves in his New Orleans home. Sixty of these works make up this retrospective/ debut, curated by John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

MA / Brockton
Fuller Craft Museum
The Faces of Politics: In/Tolerance
to Aug. 21
Every American election year is full of sound and fury, but 2016 bids fair to be one of the most clamorous and divisive yet. In this show, guest-curated by Bruce Hoffman of Gravers Lane Gallery in Philadelphia, artists take on political issues here and elsewhere in the world.

MA / Duxbury
The Art Complex Museum
Double Visions
to Sep. 4
A dozen artists with work in the museum’s permanent collection do double duty here: Each has new work on view, and each invited another artist to participate who has not previously shown at the museum. The result is a wide-ranging show of work in 2D and 3D mediums. Among the invited artists: Lisa and Scott Cylinder.

MI / Ann Arbor
The Dinnerware Museum
Cake
to Sep. 4
Recipe for a many-layered show about this celebratory sweet: Assemble almost 50 artists – some selected by a professional cake baker – to make contemporary cake sculptures and cake stands in mediums such as glass, clay, and plastic. Add more than 20 historic glass cake stands. Frost with cake history, trivia, and paraphernalia. Enjoy.

MI / Bloomfield Hills
Cranbrook Art Museum
John Glick: A Legacy in Clay
Jun. 18 – Mar. 12, 2017
After more than 50 years as the heart, mind, and main pair of hands behind Michigan’s Plum Tree Pottery, John Glick is closing the studio. This retrospective gathers almost 200 objects of his influential career – from his student days at Cranbrook in the early 1960s to his later sculptural and relief work – and traces his interest in Japanese ceramics and surface design.

NE / Omaha
Joslyn Art Museum
Sheila Hicks: Material Voices
Jun. 5 – Sep. 4
Nebraska native Sheila Hicks’ mastery of texture, color, and line is evident in weavings, sculptural works, fiber “drawings,” hanging installations, and other objects culled from her nearly 60-year career, along with a new work the American Craft Council Gold Medalist created especially for this major show. Recent pieces “converse” with older ones, connecting Hicks’ work as a totality with common influences: art history and graphic design, architecture, fashion, her own life, and global weaving traditions.

PA / Philadelphia
Center for Art in Wood
On the Edge of Your Seat: Chairs for the 21st Century
to Jul. 23
Philadelphia’s history as a center of furniture making, along with the Furniture Society’s annual conference in the city June 23 – 25, inspired this juried show of 45 chairs, benches, and stools – sculptural, functional, conceptual – and other works based on the concept of creating space for the back of the lap.

WA / Tacoma
Museum of Glass
#BeTheCurator
to Oct. 23
What would a museum show look like that was curated by … everyone? The Museum of Glass decided to find out. In 2015, visitors to the museum and its Facebook page were invited to vote on works from the collections for this show. Participants jumped in from around the globe, choosing an eclectic bunch of art. The public’s work isn’t done: Visitors’ votes will help determine which artist in the show receives a museum residency.