In September 2008, the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) reopened in a new building at 2 Columbus Circle in New York City. Formerly named the American Craft Museum and housed on W. 53rd Street, across from the Museum of Modern Art, MAD has reinvented itself as a 21st century institution. Though works in the permanent collection remain in the high-end craft vein—there are lots of uniquely shaped pots, for example, among the glass, wood, metal, clay, and fiber pieces on display—the museum’s special exhibition, Second Lives, pushes further and quite appropriately into the territory of art and design. Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary, an astute exhibition organized by Chief Curator David Revere McFadden and Curator Lowery Stokes Sims, examines the how artists “transform discarded, commonplace, or valueless objects into extraordinary works of art.” In “repurposing” objects, the exhibition’s artists ingeniously use multiples of items like q-tips, buttons, eyeglasses, and shoes to create one-of-a-kind new objects—from chandeliers to loveseats.
Of the fifty artists from seventeen countries, a number are of African descent. Willie Cole’s magnificent shoe sculpture, Loveseat (2007), is so familiar and strange—dozens old shoes with their patinas glimmering or sloughed off are crowded together to form a petite sofa. Works by Nadine Robinson such as Great White Me (2008) and China Shag (Self Portrait #1) (2001) feature walls of synthetic and human hair used for weaves—commenting on ideals of feminine beauty for black women; meanwhile, Sonya Clark uses plastic hair combs to produce a large-scale portrait of Madame C. J. Walker—the African American hair care entrepreneur of the early 1900s. Also on display is work by Guyana-bred, London-based artist Hew Locke, whose frenzied sculptural pieces include plastic toys and metallic trinkets in a seeming carnival of cereal box prizes glued and mounted together. His Golden Horde (2006) reminds one of pirate’s booty, love and theft, and indiscriminate accumulation, if not conspicuous consumption. El Anatsui, Nnenna Okore, Senga Nengudi, Chakaia Booker, and Fred Wilson are among the many other inventive artists exhibited here. In inaugurating its special exhibitions with Second Lives, the museum certainly shows and proves its reinvention as a space for the craftiest of contemporary artists and designers. Second Lives is on view through April 19, 2009.
10 January 2026