FULLER
CRAFT MUSEUM
455 Oak Street
Brockton, Massachusetts 02301
http://www.fullercraft.org
Figure 1: Fuller Craft Museum in summer. Photo credit:
Lightchaser Photography.
The Fuller
Craft Museum is the only museum in New England dedicated to collecting and
exhibiting contemporary studio craft, which encompasses hand-made functional
and decorative objects fashioned from familiar materials such as wood, metal,
glass, ceramics, paper, and fiber, and which date from circa 1945 to the
present day.[1]
It is located in the small city of Brockton, about twenty-five miles south of
Boston, in Plymouth County.[2] The museum is an
especially young institution, especially by New England standards. In August
1946, Myron F. Fuller (1872-1960)[3], a Brockton native who had
amassed considerable wealth as a geologist and hydrologist, set up a million
dollar trust toward the creation of a museum in the Fuller family name.[4] In 1969, the Boston
architecture firm of J. Timothy Anderson & Associates built the 21,000
square foot museum building – which was awarded the national blue ribbon for excellence
by the Society of American Registered Architects that same year[5] -- and the museum opened
its doors to the public under the moniker, the Brockton Art Center Fuller
Memorial.[6] At its inception, there
was still no collection, and the space was used mostly for public lectures and
small exhibitions of paintings and drawings.[7] Annual membership cost a
mere ten dollars.[8]
The Center struggled to forge its own unique identity over the course of its
first thirty-five years, collecting art in every imaginable medium and changing
its name to the Fuller Art Museum, before finally establishing itself in 2004 in
its current iteration as the Fuller Craft Museum.[9]
Today, under current director Jonathan Fairbanks, Fuller Craft Museum
receives more than 20,000 visitors and presents on average sixteen exhibits per
year[10] in six of its seven galleries; e.g., the D.
Tarlow Gallery, the M. Tarlow Gallery, the Barstow Gallery, the Stone Gallery,
the Community Gallery, and the Courtyard Gallery.[11] On-going exhibitions
include Mark Davis’ Icarus mobile
that hovers above the Courtyard Gallery, and the permanent collection entitled Traditions and Innovations: Fuller Craft
Museum Collects which is housed in the Lampos Gallery.[12] The Great Room proffers another
potential exhibition space but its main function is to hold events, lectures,
conferences, and workshops, because it has the capacity to seat large numbers
of visitors and because it contains a stage.[13] Other indoor spaces
include the artKitchen Café, Studios A & B, and the Reception/Museum Shop.[14] The building’s open air
spaces comprise two large courtyards – Courtyards A & B – and two smaller
courtyards – Courtyards C & D – and a Patio area that extends to the edge
of Porter’s Pond, which the museum along with its 22-acre wooded grounds shares
with Frederick Law Olmstead’s 700-acre D. W. Field Park.[15]
As visitors approach the covered walkway leading to
the main entrance from the front parking area, they encounter a number of
outdoor sculptures, many of which are made from natural materials in harmony
with the rock-strewn, woodland setting.[16]
 |
| Figure 2: Fuller Craft Museum Floor Plan |
“Right now, Fuller Craft Museum is the most exciting place to be in the world of contemporary craft. We offer a collection, exhibitions, demonstrations, workshops, and special events where you can literally touch the materials and objects. We strive to keep this work accessible, to put people in touch with the minds and methods of the makers, in touch with the values embodied by craft. Thus our motto–let the art touch you.”[17]
The statement above
accurately expresses the heady optimism and boundless energy of this young,
ambitious institution though it may strike some readers as pure braggadocio,
disingenuous hyperbole, and perhaps, with particular regard to their motto, a
little creepy. Considering that fewer than seventy years have passed since
Myron Fuller mandated that a museum and cultural center be established in
memory of his family, stipulating only that it should be educational in nature[18], Fuller Craft has
succeeded in honoring its debt to its original benefactor and ably fulfills its
purpose in serving the greater community. Studio craft, with its origins of highly
skilled artisans organized within trade guilds, its production of “common” objects
that are at once functional and decorative, and its roots in global cultural
traditions that are readily transmitted to successive generations arguably possesses greater inherent, popular accessibility than fine art; and it lends itself
naturally to community engagement through hands-on “maker” workshops, classes, the
provision of on-the-spot opportunities for gallery visitors to “give-it-a-try”,
etc. The collection’s emphasis on relatively recent and current works has as
its corollary that the majority of its featured artisans are still living and
actively creating. As a result, Fuller Craft Museum and its visitors literally gain
access -- both directly and indirectly -- to first-hand contextual information
from the makers themselves. The museum’s inclusion of paper-cutting artist Béatrice Coron’s
TED Talk video to accompany its current Paper
and Blade: Modern Paper Cutting exhibition (on view through July 31st)
serves as a good illustration:
[2]
Fuller Craft Museum – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Web. 18 March 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuller_Craft_Museum
[3] “Fuller
Craft Museum.” AFA News. Antiques
& Fine Art Magazine, 02 Jan 2013. Web. 18 March 2016. http://www.afanews.com/articles/item/1506-fuller-craft-museum#.Vuxe4_krJ9M
[5]
Marshall, Traute M. (2009), Art Museums
Plus: Cultural Excursions in New England. Hanover, NH and London, UK :
University Press of New England. 131-32.
[6]
Idem.
[7]
Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Annual Report 2014: july 1, 2013-june 30,
2014. Web. 18 March 2016. http://fullercraft.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Annual-Report-FY2014-zip.pdf
[11] Plan
Your Visit | Fuller Craft Museum. Web. 18 March 2016. http://fullercraft.org/plan-your-visit/
[12]
Ibid.
[13]
Ibid.
[14]
Ibid.
[15]
Ibid.
[16]
Ibid.
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