25 years of fine crafts at the Renwick Gallery

Kenneth R. Trapp

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The Renwick Gallery

This essay by Kenneth R. Trapp, head of the Renwick Gallery, is excerpted from Skilled Work: American Craft in the Renwick Gallery, which was published earlier this year to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC.

A visitor to the nation’s capital strolling along oPennsylvania Avenue and pausing to inspect the facade of the handsome French Second-Empire building at the corner of 17th Street sees high above its entrance the simple words, “Dedicated to Art.” Quite reasonably, the stroller assumes that this structure houses an old museum.

Rick Dillingham, Gas Can [1981], glazed earthenware, 19 x 16 1/2 x 3 3/8, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Luria and Trudy Luria Fleisher from the collection of and memory of Michael Stephen Luria.

In truth, the Renwick Gallery is a mere youth among American art museums. Although the building that is its home was designed in 1858 to be Washington’s first art museum—the original Corcoran Gallery of Art—the vicissitudes of civil war, the fickleness of personal fortune, the utilitarian needs of government, and later the ravages of long neglect conspired to mock the dedicatory words. The Renwick Gallery, now occupying the elegantly restored building that once also housed the U.S. Court of Claims, celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1997 an appropriate time to reflect on the path it has traveled since being established.

The Renwick Gallery is actually three entities in one. First, it is a curatorial department within the National Museum of American Art. Because the Renwick Gallery is physically separated from its parent institution by nine city blocks, the public tends to perceive it as an independent museum. Second, the Renwick functions as a museum that collects, exhibits, studies, and preserves the finest work in American craft and design. Third, the Renwick is housed in a historic building that is maintained as an architectural landmark.

Claire Zeisler, Coil Series III—A Celebration [1978], natural hemp and wool, 65 x 34.

The building was erected between 1859 and 1861 by William Wilson Corcoran to showcase his collection of paintings and sculptures. During the Civil War, however, the U.S. Army seized the building and used it as a warehouse for storage. In 1869 it was returned to Corcoran, who immediately deeded it to a board of trustees, and in 1874 it opened to the public as the Corcoran Gallery of Art. When the Corcoran collection moved to a new location in 1897, the building next served as the U.S. government’s Court of Claims until the court outgrew the space and moved in 1964. Thanks to President John F. Kennedy’s initiative in 1962, the building escaped demolition. In 1965 Smithsonian Secretary S. Dillon Ripley proposed to President Lyndon B. Johnson that the building be used as a gallery of arts, crafts, and design. Johnson agreed and the building was renamed the Renwick Gallery that year in honor of the original architect, James Renwick Jr.

After massive renovations the Renwick Gallery opened its doors to the public on January 28, 1972, with Lloyd E. Herman as its first administrator. Eight exhibitions of varying size and ambition curated by Herman were on view, offering a synthesis of his all-embracing approach to design and forecasting the great variety of shows that he would present during his term. Woodenworks: Furniture Objects by Five Contemporary Craftsmen was the principal exhibition and featured 50 custom-designed pieces of furniture by American master woodworkers who represented the first generation of woodworking in the United States in the post-World War II movement: Arthur Espenet Carpenter, Wendell Castle, Wharton Esherick, George Nakashima, and Sam Maloof.

Beatrice Wood, Tides in a Man’s Life [c1988], gold luster-glazed ceramic, 11 1/2 x 5 1/2, gift of Kenneth R. Trapp in honor of Shelby M. Gans.

Because the Renwick opened as an exhibition site without a mandate to form a collection, the issue of defining decorative arts, design, and crafts was not yet the concern it would become. It opened with the idea of functioning as a German kuntshalle—a series of spaces within a single building where temporary exhibitions would be presented on a regularly chang-ing schedule. Because the Renwick had no permanent collection, its identity and the public perception of the gallery were formed by the temporary exhibition schedule. For this reason, the exhibitions assumed particular importance. In his 15 years at the Renwick, Herman created a program of con-siderable imagination. From January 1972 to May 1986 when he retired as director, Herman was responsible for 116 exhibitions.

Having opened with no intention of collecting art, after 10 years the Renwick Gallery staff had become convinced that collecting craft was an appropriate mission. Herman developed the Renwick’s permanent collection primarily through donations and purchases. It is important to remember that in the early 1970s there was no national network of galleries promoting craft and bringing noteworthy artists to the attention of curators and major collectors. It was common for Herman to select objects for the permanent collection from exhibitions that he had organized or brought to the Renwick from elsewhere.

In October 1983 Elizabeth Broun was appointed assistant director and chief curator of the National Museum of American Art. Together with Charles Eldredge, the director, she forged a vision of the NMAA as a national center for collecting, exhibiting, and studying American art, including craft. Part of Broun’s job was to assume curatorial supervision of the Renwick. With the new emphasis on American crafts and design, she and Eldredge were committed to building a program at the Renwick that emphasized strong academic research, scholarly publications, and important exhibitions.

Howard Ben Tre, First Vase [1989], cast glass, gift of the James Renwick Alliance and museum purchase made possible by the Smithsonian Collections Acquisitions Program.

In May 1986 the Renwick codified several goals, notably to collect the work of 20th-century craft artists of the highest caliber, to showcase exhibitions on all aspects of American craft and its historic traditions, and to undertake and publish research about American crafts.

When Herman retired in 1986, Michael W. Monroe replaced him as the Renwick’s second administrator, and the museum began to develop a permanent collection in a systematic manner, to cultivate donors and collectors, and to make scholarship a significant part of its purpose.

Monroe began to institute and carry out plans consonant with the NMAA’s mission. For one, foreign exhibitions were discontinued. Second, he began to identify artists and particular objects to be targeted for acquisition. To raise funds for the purchase of choice works of art, Monroe nurtured the relation-ship between the Renwick Gallery and the James Renwick Alliance, a support group for the Renwick that had been founded in 1982. The importance of the alliance in the development of the Renwick Gallery’s permanent collection cannot be over-estimated, as it was committed to furthering the growth of the collection and its education programs. And when there was uncertainty in 1986 about the future of the Renwick itself—its historic galleries were being eyed as a place to display collections pertaining to the presidents and first ladies, musical instruments, or exhibitions organized by the Smithsonian Institution’s Traveling Exhibition Program—the alliance wrote letters to collectors, curators, artists, galleries, university professors, writers, and others urging them to add their voices to the campaign to save it.

Sidney Ralph Hutter, Vase #65-78 [1990], plate glass, 23 x 15, gift of the James Renwick Alliance, Anne and Ronald Abramson, Sarah and Edwin Hansen, and museum purchase program through the Smithsonian Collections Acquisitions Program.

In 1989 Broun became director of the NMAA. Sensitive to the unusual founding and unique history of the Renwick Gallery, she has been careful to strengthen it as an invaluable curatorial department in the NMAA that is unparalleled in any other American art museum. She has encouraged the systematic development of the craft collection by making funds available for acquisition whenever possible. Further, Broun has continued funding the Renwick fellowship program and has championed innovative ideas in the organization of exhibitions.

In September 1995 I left my position as curator of decorative arts at the Oakland Museum of California to become the third head of the Renwick Gallery. Over the course of two eventful and rewarding years, I have worked to carry out the mission of the Renwick Gallery: to foster greater appreciation and under-standing of the art of craft.

In the spring of 1997 the Renwick celebrated its 25th anniversary with an exhibition,
The Renwick at 25, which showcased 101 objects in the permanent collection representing all craft media. That same year part of the permanent collection was reinstalled on the second floor in refurbished galleries designed to highlight each object displayed in the elegant architectural setting.

As we peer unknowingly into the future, it is important to keep in mind that museums are not mausoleums frozen in time but are alive and ever-changing, just as the times in which they exist are in constant flux. More than three decades after the derelict U.S. Court of Claims building was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution to be restored as the Renwick Gallery, and 25 years after the Renwick opened as a gallery of American craft, we can be happy that its original proud claim—Dedicated to Art—remains a fact.

Coming exhibitions at the Renwick Gallery include Daniel Brush: Gold Without Boundaries, through January 10, 1999, and The Stone-wares of Charles Fergus Binns: The Father of American Studio Ceramics, through January 3, 1999. For more information about the museum call 202.633.8998 or 202.357.2700.

Photos courtesy the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.