Namita Gupta Wiggers: “One Hundred Lifetimes and A Day”

Department of Art Visiting Artist Lecture Series
Thursday, January 30, 2020 at 4:00 p.m. in Lawrence Hall
Free and open to all.

“Research is both process and product, and I want to practice different ways of telling the story of how craft research fills my days — and lengthens my years  — with you.

A colleague of mine showed me how he reads a forest, pointing out what shows itself now after 100 years of growth, and mapping a vision of what will come 100 years from now. It brought sculptor James Surls to my mind, who once said,  ‘I make objects. It takes so long. It would take me a lifetime to build just what I can dream in one day. I want a hundred lifetimes and one day.’

For a decade, my days were about making exhibitions in a craft museum. Today, my work is about research. I develop a low-residency graduate program focused on craft histories and theory, where a day’s work of teaching may not surface for years. Now, my writing lives mostly in words, not spatial essays — and is not so photogenic.” – Namita Gupta Wiggers, 2019

Namita Gupta Wiggers is a writer, curator, and educator based in Portland, OR. She is the Director of the recently launched Master of Arts in Craft Studies at Warren Wilson College, North Carolina. She is the Director and Co-Founder of Critical Craft Forum, and from 2004-14, Wiggers served as Curator and then Director and Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR. Wiggers contributes regularly to online and in-print journals and books. She serves on the Editorial Boards of Garland magazine and Norwegian Crafts. Recent curatorial projects include: Across the Table, Across the Land with Michael Strand for the National Council on Ceramic Education in the Arts; Everything Has Been Material for Scissors to Shape, a textile-focused exhibition at the Wing Luke Museum of Asian American Experience, Seattle; a forthcoming publication with Wiley Blackwell Publishers; and Gender + Adornment, an ongoing research project with Benjamin Lignel. Wiggers is the Center for Art Research‘s inaugural writer-in-residence for 2019-20.

Photo: Mario Gallucci