Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting

No, it's not the title of a Tom Wolfe piece circa 1975. It's the new travelling exhibit from the Museum of Art and Design.

If you still think knitting is for grannies and retro grrlz, check out the ways artists are now using knitting to make provocative, conceptual works. The MAD exhibit aims to show us that our distinctions between high art and lowly crafts are arbitrary, based on the materials used rather than on the power of the piece.

As regular blog readers know, this a subject dear to my heart. When chauvenist blowhards ask rhetorically where all the great women artists of the past are, I always invite them to see the textile halls at the Victoria and Albert. For centuries, women used fiber and fabric -- the only materials available to them -- to create expressive art. Women were grappling with abstraction centuries before the Cedar Tavern had a liquor license.

The Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting travelling exhibit will be available starting in July. For booking information, contact the museum.

Photo: Althea Merback's art, Museum of Art and Design