Center for Craft

The Center for Craft will install a Materials Library, an interactive, flexible collection of traditional and innovative craft materials, in its Engagement Studio, a hands-on educational area that encourages interaction with craft through approachable activities and resources. The Materials Library will offer the Center’s visitors the opportunity for tactile engagement with approximately 100 samples of traditional, innovative, and sustainability-minded materials housed in a custom display shelf along with corresponding information about the materials’ properties accessible through a digital Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) scanner and interactive display. The resulting public-facing resource will scaffold the public’s understanding of what craft is and what it can be, shifting past perceptions of craft and encouraging consideration of its potential. The Materials Library will also serve as a pilot for the kind of collaborative, radically accessible installation the museum plans to continue exploring through the platform of the Engagement Studio.