Podcast appearances and mentions of namita gupta wiggers

the 65th episode of Perceived Value host Sarah Rachel Brown connects remotely with Namita Gupta Wiggers. Namita is a writer, educator, and curator based in Portland, OR that Sarah met in Chicago during a conference in 2019. Since that time, Sarah has followed Namita's work with the Critical Craft Forum and the MA in Critical Craft Studies program at Warren Wilson College. Having learned that the Critical Craft Studies program would be closing, Sarah reached to ask if Namita would share what her role was as Director of the program and what this closure means for both her and the students. The conversation gives insight as how the program was created, the intention behind the curriculum, the importance of understanding budgets, and how the college is navigating the logistics of the closure. This insightful conversation has been produced in two parts.The extended audio from this conversation is available through the Perceived Value Patreon.ABOUT OUR GUEST:Namita Gupta Wiggers is a writer, educator, and curator based in Portland, OR. Wiggers serves as the founding director of the MA in Critical Craft Studies at Warren Wilson College, the first and only low-residency program focused on craft histories and theory. She co-founded Critical Craft Forum, an online and onsite platform for dialogue and exchange including projects such as annual College Art Association Conference sessions from 2009-2019. Wiggers served as curator and then chief curator and director of Museum of Contemporary Craft/PNCA from 2004–14. Prior experiences as a museum educator, design researcher, studio jeweler, and life as an American of South Asian heritage also shape her research and writing on craft and culture.namitawiggers.com@namitapdx@criticalcraftforum@macraftstudieswwcMentioned in the podcast:Master of Arts in Critical Craft StudiesCraft Think TankMichael Hatch of Crucible GlassworksBecome a Perceived Value Patron on Patreon. Help Sarah reach her goal of 100 patrons by subscribing with a $1 monthly donation. CLICK HERE to become a Patron. Don't forget to Rate AND Review us on iTunes!Instagram + Facebook: @perceivedvalueFind your Host:sarahrachelbrown.comInstagram: @sarahrachelbrownThe music you hear on Perceived Value is by the Seattle group Song Sparrow Research.All You Need to Know off of their album Sympathetic Buzz.Find them on Spotify!

Do you remember the ceramics field before the internet? How we got information about what galleries, colleges, and studio artists were doing was radically different. Garth Clark (Cfile) and Namita Gupta Wiggers (Critical Craft Forum) describe how they've built online platforms to look at creative culture in a whole new way. Skutt is a proud sponsor of Trade Secret. Skutt Ceramic Products has been manufacturing equipment for Potters since 1953. Skutt's reputation as a pioneer in innovative kiln design continues with the 4th generation of this family-owned Business. Their KilnMaster Touchscreen controller offers a sleek, smartphone like interface, that is intuitive and packed with powerful tools that allow potters to easily program, diagnose and remotely monitor their kilns. With 5 dedicated kiln technicians on staff and the most comprehensive network of distributors across the globe, you can be assured that Skutt will be there for you before and after the sale. For more information on their line of kilns visit www.skutt.com.  

Diya Vij started her new job as Associate Curator of Creative Time just last fall, in the midst of the pandemic. She has since announced the first Creative Time Think Tank cohort, which includes La Tanya S. Autry, Caitlin Cherry, Sonia Guiñansaca, Namita Gupta Wiggers, and a number of other engaged voices of the art community. This new initiative invited people to submit proposals for an open call, drawing 200 individual or group applicants. The selected cohort will meet regularly for the next 10 months to reflect on the realities around us and imagine a way forward for the cultural sector.Vij has built a reputation over the years for her work at the Queens Museum, High Line, and in the Commissioner’s Unit of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, where she created the Public Artists in Residence program. She joins me to discuss this unusual think tank and what the collective hopes to accomplish.Music is Lorenzo Senni’s “Move in Silence (Only Speak When It’s Time to Say Checkmate)” from Warp Records.Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.

Namita Wiggers joins Tyler professors Chad Curtis and Jesse Harrod in a conversation about Questions of Critical Craft. Namita Gupta Wiggers is a writer, curator, and educator based in Portland, OR. She is the Director and Co-Founder of Critical Craft Forum. Wiggers teaches in MFA Applied Craft + Design, co-administered by Oregon College of Art + Craft and Pacific Northwest College of Art, and at Portland State University. She contributes to online and in-print journals and books, serves as the Exhibition Reviews Editor, The Journal of Modern Craft, and on the Editorial Board of Garland. Recent projects include: Across the Table, Across the Land with Michael Strand for the National Council on Ceramic Education in the Arts; EVERYTHING HAS BEEN MATERIAL FOR SCISSORS TO SHAPE, a textile-focused exhibition at the Wing Luke Museum of Asian American Experience, Seattle; a forthcoming publication with Wiley Blackwell Publishers; and a study of gender and jewelry with Benjamin Lignel. 

Namita Gupta Wiggers is a curator, writer, educator, and artist living in Portland, Oregon. A first generation American of South Asian descent, she is a keen observer of how people select and organize their lives. She began her career in museums, eventually serving as curator and then director of the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland. Namita sees curation as both collaborative and empathic—that the curator's job is to make room for multiple narratives to exist within a project. A lifelong learner, she believes that when she comes across something she isn't familiar with—a culture, a tradition, an artist—the onus is on her to learn more. In keeping with that approach, Namita is a co-founder of Critical Craft Forum, which provides spaces for makers to discuss critical issues to the field of craft, including a recent symposium on Gender and Jewelry in New York City. After more than a decade of focusing on writing and curating, she joins Make/Time just as she returns to making jewelry with upcoming residencies with Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts and Ox-bow School of Art. Make/Time shares conversations about craft, inspiration, and the creative process. Listen to leading makers and thinkers talk about where they came from, what they're making, and where they're going next. Make/Time is hosted by Stuart Kestenbaum and is a project of craftschools.us. Major funding is provided by the Windgate Charitable Foundation.

The material turn in art is deeply linked to craft processes, materials and ways of making. For Book Talk, we invite people from different fields to read and discuss a single book. How might artists, curators, educators, and theorists respond to a book and potentially use as a tool in their own thinking? Join Stephen Knott, Sarah Margolis-Pineo, Rowland Ricketts, and Namita Gupta Wiggers for their discussion of anthropologist Tim Ingold's Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. This first episode was recorded at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine in person and via skype in July 2014. Special thanks to Brian R. Jones for sound editing and Calder Wiggers for the music. Visit www.criticalcraftforum for more information.

Namita Gupta Wiggers is on our show this week, talking about changes in the regional art landscape since 2000, and the recent news that she's stepping down as Director/Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Craft.

Photo by Micah Fischer ‘13. CraftPerspectives Lecture | Namita Gupta Wiggers and Benjamin Lignel on Contemporary Jewelry Museum of Contemporary Craft and the MFA in Applied Craft and Design welcome Benjamin Lignel and Namita Gupta Wiggers.   Contemporary jewelry is doing OK. It does not need another pat on the back in the form of a 300-page book of images. When taking on the task of editor in 2010, Damian Skinner decided to treat Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective as an opportunity to examine jewelry as a mature, fully developed practice. Rather than propose yet another set of justifications for its existence, he led a project to provide instruments to navigate the spaces in which jewelry lives (Part 1), to understand the history of the field (Part 2), and to grasp some of the contentious issues that animate jewelry today (Part 3). This joint lecture by Benjamin Lignel and Namita Wiggers, both contributors to Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective, Part 1, will look at the history of contemporary jewelry through the lens of some of its defining moments. Why was the critique of preciousness so important? What exactly is de-skilling, and does it herald the end of bench-based craft? Why is inheritance an issue for long-term preservation of contemporary jewelry? Lignel and Wiggers will also discuss the spaces of contemporary jewelry, revealing how they are both found and invented as products of contemporary practice. We will show how such spaces are determined by maker’s willingness to appropriate them and to challenge the limits of what is historically “given.” While we share some assumptions about contemporary jewelry, our positions as curator and editor/maker have colored, and to some extent polarized, how we think about the field. This lecture is meant to test our methodology and to better understand the functionality of the book as a user-friendly tool kit. The lecture will pick up selected tools in a non-linear presentation of a non-linear book with the goal of leaving the audience with the strange urge to burn, and then redraw the plinth on which contemporary jewelry sits. This program is co-sponsored by Art Jewelry Forum and the MFA in Applied Craft + Design. A book signing will follow the lecture. Download