[Re-]Thinking Curating Design and Craft: Beyond institutional frameworks

Welcome to the third conversation about contemporary curatorial practice operating in relation to Design and Craft!

This series of events, inviting Swedish and international curators and other cultural producers, presents and discusses various aspects of curating in relation to these fields. Through a series of examples, different approaches, contexts, methods, effects and results are discussed, highlighting diverse perspectives and experiences.

Participants: Michael Barrett and Sumitra Upham. Introduction and moderation by Magnus Ericson and Christina Zetterlund

Photo: Andrea Davis Kronlund

Designer Nchawaka Kanyama (Manje by Ncha) shows her Kuwesa collection (2022) in Lusaka, Zambia. Textile patterns are inspired by Zambian cultural belongings held at the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm.

Design and craft practices are in transition and today often operate within an expanded context where the creation of objects also includes a commitment to social, political and historical issues. These are dynamic practices that involve many different individuals and social groups, acting outside the traditional institutional frameworks and often in relation to specific places and contexts.

In this seminar, we will focus on an expanded understanding of craft, as existing in many geographies and traveling through diverse epistemologies. With an attempt to move past given institutional definitions and divisions, it takes its point of departure in the handmade – something that is being practised in various places by people with diverse backgrounds and different forms of education. Together with curators Michael Barrett and Sumitra Upham, we will investigate how to curate craft beyond the traditional institutional frameworks. They will, through their distinct practices, show how curating can invite this great complexity of craft, as well as discuss the challenges involved in this work.

Michael Barrett is an anthropologist, researcher, and curator of the African collections at the National Museums of World Culture (NMWC) in Sweden. His current research focus is on the colonial history of the collections as well as on the representation of Africa and people of African descent in museum displays in past, present, and future Sweden. Recent curatorial work includes Ongoing Africa (2017–2024), a project which critically examines the vast collections from the African continent at the NMWC through collaborations, research, exhibitions, and public programs.

Sumitra Upham is a curator based in London with an interest in material cultures, urbanism and the civic role of institutions. Currently, she is Associate Director, Curatorial and Public Practice at Wellcome Collection. She was Co-curator of Dancing Before the Moon, the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2022) and Head of Programmes at the Crafts Council. Previously she held curatorial and programming positions at the Design Museum and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.

Christina Zetterlund is craft and design historian with an interest in history writing practices where craft and design become a lens for analysing social situations. She is active as associate professor at the Department of Design, Linneaus University as well as an independent curator. She has been curating the re-search project (Re-)learning the archive at Designarkivet Pukeberg and currently the exhibition Här omkring, presented at Designarkivet in Pukeberg and at Form Design Center, Malmö.

[Re-]Thinking Curating Design and Craft is a series of conversations presented by IASPIS, developed and implemented as a collaboration between Christina Zetterlund who is curator and lecturer in design at Linnaeus University and Magnus Ericson who is Head of Applied Arts at IASPIS.