During the summer of 2020, the space outside the Renwick Gallery-the Smithsonian American Art Museum's dedicated museum for contemporary craft and decorative arts-became home to a new discussion about racial justice on Black Lives Matter Plaza. The curators at the Renwick Gallery felt the need to align themselves with what was going on right outside the Gallery's door, the organizing rationale for understanding the objects presented in this volume, many of which are new acquisitions. The title is taken from Alicia Eggert's 2019-2020 eponymous neon work, and the 85 objects in the main plates section lead the reader from the idea of shelter, through layers of expanding spaces to the vast expanses of the universe. The volume looks at contemporary American craft "in the whirlwind of now" revealing possibilities for contemporary makers to respond to a more empathetic future.

Forces of Nature: Renwick Invitational 2020 features artists Lauren Fensterstock, Timothy Horn, Debora Moore, and Rowland Ricketts. Nature provides a way for these invited artists to ask what it means to be human in a world increasingly chaotic and divorced from our physical landscape. Representing craft media from fiber to mosaic to glass and metals, these artists approach the long history of art's engagement with the natural world through unconventional and highly personal perspectives. Forces of Nature: Renwick Invitational 2020 is the ninth installment of the Renwick Invitational. Established in 2000, this biennial showcase highlights midcareer and emerging makers who are deserving of wider national recognition.The featured artists work in a wide variety of media, from Lauren Fensterstock, who creates detailed, large-scale installations using intensive modes of making drawn from the decorative arts, including paper quilling and mosaic, and from whom SAAM has commissioned a site-specific work--inspired in part by the illustrated renaissance German manuscript The Book of Miracles ---that will transform an entire gallery at the Renwick, to Timothy Horn, who creates exaggerated adornments that combine natural and constructed worlds, taking inspiration from objects as varied as baroque jewellery patterns and Victorian era detailed studies of lichen, coral, and seaweed, from bronze and glass, as well as unusual materials like crystalized rock sugar, to evoke the extravagant Amber Room in the Catherine the Great's palace of Tsarskoye Selo; and from Debora Moore, known for her exquisitely detailed glass renderings of orchids, and who is represented in this volume in her new series, Arboria (2018), in which Moore focuses less on realism and more on capturing an intensely personal experience of beauty and wonder, to Rowland Ricketts who creates immersive installations using handwoven and hand-dyed cloth, starting on his farm, where he cultivates the indigo plants he uses to colour his artwork, fully linking his material and process with the finished product. Participatory engagement from non-artists, forms a major part of Rickett's work, emphasizing the relationship between nature, culture, the passage of time, and everyday life.

"Craft for a Modern World" highlights nearly 200 of the extraordinary craft objects held at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum. Nora Atkinson looks at the whole notion of what defines craft, and how attitudes towards it are continually changing, from the pioneering years of the studio craft movement through to new definitions and expressions of craft today.This fully illustrated new volume features works by artists including Matthias Pilessnig, George Nakashima, Albert Paley, Ron Fleming, Zack Peabody, Billie Ruth Sudduth, Todd Hope, Michael James, Toots Zynsky, Michael Sherrill, Patti Warashina, Merry Renk, Kim Schmahmann.