Janet Kardon 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 - PRINTER VERSION
>> RB: Will the museum be funded by the Crafts Council?
JK: There will be independent budgets.
RB: Is the museum going to be responsible for raising its own funds or will it get funding from the Crafts Council?
JK: Well, some of these details haven't been worked out yet. But will I be involved in fundraising in my new position? Yes, I will be, just as I was involved in fundraising at the ICA. I rather like fundraising; it is the one thing that I do that is very measurable. I can do an exhibition and like it and think that it's pretty good and I can like the catalogue, but it's very qualitative. Fundraising is very specific.
RB: What is going to be the rough size of the budget?
JK: About $1.5 million.
RB: Since the 1940s we have looked at or defined craft by medium; that definition seems to be played out. The craft world now seems to be separated not by medium but by differing conceptual positions about what defines an object as craft. Painting and sculpture have their own language and we understand them to a great degree inside or through that language. What do you think distinguishes the craft language from, say, painting, something that helps us read an object and understand it?
JK: I think one of the really exciting things is that some of those boundaries are being broken down. I recently, for example, saw the Mark Burns show at Helen Drutt Gallery and I was thinking of that work very much along with Jeff Koons¼ recent show at Sonnabend and they both are looking upon mass culture and the kitschy aspects of mass culture. They take the tchotchke and blow it up to monumental scale. It's all that glitzy kind of surface, a very seductive kind of surface, and what really is the difference there, and is there any difference, and if there are differences are they as important as looking at a Jeff Koons object or a Mark Burns object and responding to it? I think it is more important to respond to them as objects than necessarily to make comparisons.
RB: But already you've made a comparison.
JK: No, I haven't. I said I'm not making a comparison. One called the other to mind.
RB: I'm not talking about a qualitative comparison. Part of the way the human brain understands things is by making analogies comparing this to that to understand what it is. I wonder, for example, what language Mark Burns is using. Is he using what historically we recognize as the craft language or is he using craft materials and processes inside the modern fine arts language?
JK: I think probably what you are discussing is the content of the work and the intent of the work.
>>
© 1980 - 2025 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign
>> RB: Will the museum be funded by the Crafts Council?
JK: There will be independent budgets.
RB: Is the museum going to be responsible for raising its own funds or will it get funding from the Crafts Council?
JK: Well, some of these details haven't been worked out yet. But will I be involved in fundraising in my new position? Yes, I will be, just as I was involved in fundraising at the ICA. I rather like fundraising; it is the one thing that I do that is very measurable. I can do an exhibition and like it and think that it's pretty good and I can like the catalogue, but it's very qualitative. Fundraising is very specific.
RB: What is going to be the rough size of the budget?
JK: About $1.5 million.
RB: Since the 1940s we have looked at or defined craft by medium; that definition seems to be played out. The craft world now seems to be separated not by medium but by differing conceptual positions about what defines an object as craft. Painting and sculpture have their own language and we understand them to a great degree inside or through that language. What do you think distinguishes the craft language from, say, painting, something that helps us read an object and understand it?
JK: I think one of the really exciting things is that some of those boundaries are being broken down. I recently, for example, saw the Mark Burns show at Helen Drutt Gallery and I was thinking of that work very much along with Jeff Koons¼ recent show at Sonnabend and they both are looking upon mass culture and the kitschy aspects of mass culture. They take the tchotchke and blow it up to monumental scale. It's all that glitzy kind of surface, a very seductive kind of surface, and what really is the difference there, and is there any difference, and if there are differences are they as important as looking at a Jeff Koons object or a Mark Burns object and responding to it? I think it is more important to respond to them as objects than necessarily to make comparisons.
RB: But already you've made a comparison.
JK: No, I haven't. I said I'm not making a comparison. One called the other to mind.
RB: I'm not talking about a qualitative comparison. Part of the way the human brain understands things is by making analogies comparing this to that to understand what it is. I wonder, for example, what language Mark Burns is using. Is he using what historically we recognize as the craft language or is he using craft materials and processes inside the modern fine arts language?
JK: I think probably what you are discussing is the content of the work and the intent of the work.
>>
© 1980 - 2025 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign