Boxing Practice

From 1937 to 2007, “contemporary crafts” was synonymous in Portland with not only a movement, but with a place. That place was 3934 SW Corbett Street, the home of the Contemporary Crafts Gallery (previously known as the Oregon Ceramic Studio and later known as Museum of Contemporary Craft).

The Contemporary Crafts Gallery on Corbett was home to a devoted community of artists, craftsmen, collectors, and appreciators. Early supporters of the Gallery believed that artists needed a community, and a community needed artists. In this sense, the Contemporary Crafts Gallery was ahead of its time, a genuinely holistic environment that felt like home to the art community at large.

In Boxing Practice, students from PNCA's Spring 2018 "Theory of the Object" seminar point back to the vibrant community and conversations of those early years by showcasing objects added to the collection during the Corbett era, albeit concealed in cardboard boxes and muffled beneath layers of bubble wrap and packing tape. By displaying these remarkable works of contemporary craft in their archival costumes, the exhibition examines what is gained or lost when an object is added to a collection, whether an object shifts in meaning when it can't be seen, and what remains as time, memory, history, and even archives inevitably evolve, dissolve, or change ownership.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website