- (Stephanie Stebich) How do you mark a fiftieth anniversary?
You do it with a nod to the past,
you do it with an understanding of the present,
and you do it with a look towards the future.
- (Narrator) For the last fifty years,
the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum
has been a place unlike any other,
with its singular focus on American craft,
its prime location across the street from the White House,
and its prized membership in the Smithsonian family
of world-class museums.
Yet so much of what makes the Renwick indisputably special
are its unquantifiables.
- (Stephanie Stebich) The Renwick is elegant and yet approachable.
The Renwick is a classic and yet ever current.
The Renwick is a place of familiarity for many
and yet always a place of surprise and wonder.
- (Karen LaMonte) It's like a treasure trove.
The Renwick is really a time capsule
that goes across generations.
- (Chawne Kimber) The Renwick is a repository
for what we've built as a nation.
- (Steven Young Lee) The Renwick is tasked with being stewards
of craft America and to represent
the diversity of cultures and perspectives in this country,
and it's a big responsibility.
- (Katie Hudnall) The Renwick is a space that I can reliably go to and say,
"Okay, young students that I am working with,
do you need resources?
Go ahead and bookmark the Renwick
because it's going to be a valuable resource for you."
- (Sharon Kerry-Harlan) The Renwick is enduring.
The Renwick is encompassing.
The Renwick is enlightening.
- (Consuelo Jiménez Underwood) It's a fellowship.
The Renwick can't be an institution
with one person involved.
It's got to be a group of people.
All for one and one for all.
And that's what I feel like with my fellow craftspeople
and ultimately the people who work at the Renwick.
- (Narrator) The Renwick is the little museum that could,
"a triumph over neglect," as the Washington Post wrote
in anticipation of the galleries opening in 1972.
The New York Times proclaimed,
"After 111 years of being kicked around
as a clothing warehouse, an Army office building,
a courthouse for aggrieved citizens
and a convention hall for pigeons,
the Renwick Gallery finally has become
what it was meant to be--a home for the arts."
A home for the Smithsonian American Art Museum's
Contemporary Craft Program, to be exact.
Amid the zeitgeist of the early 1970s,
with the country navigating the aftermaths
of the social justice movements,
and the communal counterculture spirit
that marked the previous decade,
interest in the American studio craft movement
had never been higher.
Smithsonian leadership seized the opportunity
to house the nation's first collection devoted to craft.
It was a fated convergence, and for the last half century,
craft and the Renwick have grown together.
Anniversaries are occasions
for both celebration and reflection.
- (Stephanie Stebich) The Renwick at the fiftieth-year mark
is a moment also for us to think about
what collections we have built up through purpose
and through accident and through obviously many gifts,
and it is also a moment for us to think about,
"Where will we take the collection?"
- (Nora Atkinson) We've been looking at the things that we do very well
and the things that we don't do so well,
and we have been filling in along those lines.
We realized that we were not as diverse
as we really wanted to be.
So, this campaign was about bringing
a lot of voices together
that really hadn't been heard in the museum before.
- (Narrator) The Renwick's fiftieth anniversary
acquisitions campaign was a smashing success,
generating enthusiasm among artists, donors,
and collectors all across the country.
The result? Nearly two hundred incredible works,
mostly by living artists,
were added to the museum's collection.
- (Karen LaMonte) If I was to say, the Renwick is one thing, it's evolving.
- (Consuelo Jiménez Underwood) What they're doing when they capture these pieces
that are in their collection, is they capture a time,
a glimpse into our time, a glimpse into our society,
a glimpse into who we are as a people, as humans.
That's what they encapsulate
and put away for future generations.
That's pretty big, heavy stuff.
- (Sharon Kerry-Harlan) This is a place and a collection I believe in,
and I'm excited to see it continue to thrive.
- (Katie Hudnall) I am so grateful to be making
and to be part of this conversation
as things are expanding forward and also back,
in a way that sort of allows us to find histories
that were not being talked about or written previously.
- (Chawne Kimber) I think the Renwick represents
sort of the pinnacle of craft
and what we're doing as a nation,
what we want to remember as a nation,
and what we want to preserve as a nation,
as representative of what we as Americans have built
in response to our world.
- (Narrator) The exhibition,
"This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World,"
showcases how artists have responded
to the present moment and includes 135 new acquisitions,
never before seen at the Renwick.
- (Mary Savig) This exhibition took flight with the generosity and spirit
of our craft community.
"This Present Moment" inhabits both floors of the museum.
The first floor asks, "How have you re-imagined
your idea of home during the global pandemic?"
On the second floor, we ask the question,
"How is craft relevant to your life?"
- (Nora Atkinson) I think craft has always been very relevant
but I'm not sure it has ever been as important
as it is today.
- (Consuelo Jiménez Underwood) I think for this time and age, the crafts are essential,
because it forces the individual to look at their world
and interact with it in a meaningful and full way.
- (Steven Young Lee) As our world becomes so much more virtual,
there's a innate need for a lot of us as humans
to feel like you want to engage with physical material
and actually touch things.
I love that it boils down
to that very simple way of connecting.
- (Chawne Kimber) There's always going to be this need to restore back
to a sense of what humans are capable of
with their own hands,
and so I have a sense that the future of craft
is quite bright, quite full, and promising.
- (Narrator) Given their coupled journeys,
it's safe to say that both the future of craft
and the future of the Renwick
are bursting with possibilities.
- (Stephanie Stebich) What's next for the Renwick?
What do the next fifty years hold?
I think it's really only what our imagination holds.
For the many artists, collectors, and dealers,
and friends of the Renwick,
I really wanna warmly thank you
for all the gifts you have made, gifts to the nation,
and gifts to the future.