Life and work of the textile artist.

* LongHouse Reserve was founded by Jack Lenor Larsen, internationally known textile designer, author, and collector * Its collections, gardens, sculptures, and programs reflect world cultures and inspire a creative approach to contemporary lifeLarsen's home, LongHouse, located on 16 acres in East Hampton, NY, was built as a case study to exemplify a creative approach to contemporary life. He believes visitors experiencing art in living spaces have a unique learning experience - more meaningful than the best media. Inspired by the famous Japanese shrine at Ise, LongHouse contains 13,000 square feet, 18 spaces on four levels. The gardens present the designed landscape as an art form and offer a diversity of sites for the sculpture installations.

Particularly intriguing are Larsen's far-flung sojourns over several decades, during which he both sought inspiration from indigenous textile traditions and guided thriving workshops with local weavers.

In the Vanguard: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, 1950–1969 traces the first two decades of the Haystack Mountain School of Craft’s history and its pivotal impact on the world of art and craft practice in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. The first scholarly investigation of this internationally renowned school, the exhibition, and the accompanying catalogue will feature work made at Haystack or influenced by time spent there by some of the most highly recognized names in the fields of fiber, glass, ceramics, jewelry, and graphic arts to demonstrate the school’s significant role in debates about art, craft, industry, and pedagogy in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Haystack’s model of brief summer sessions and changing instructors offered new ways of thinking about the status of craft as art and the nature of accessible design in the context of communally based, process-oriented learning. Anni Albers, Toshiko Takaezu, Jack Lenor Larsen, Kay Sekimachi, Arline Fisch, Robert Arneson, Harvey Littleton, Wolf Kahn, and Dale Chihuly are just a few of the artists who taught at the school between 1950 and 1969 and who helped define Haystack’s radically open-ended approach towards art and craft. With approximately eighty objects assembled from public and private collections and archives, many rarely or never before exhibited in a museum, In the Vanguard will establish the substantial legacy of this remote community of makers in the art and education world at large. Archival material installed throughout the exhibition will include original correspondence, photographs, brochures, architectural models, posters, and early ephemera. Published in association with the Portland Museum of Art. Exhibition dates: Portland Museum of Art, Maine: May 24–September 8, 2019 Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan: November 15, 2019–March 8, 2020

Utilitarian objects, including basketry, ceramics, lacquer, metalwork, and textiles, are presented in five areas of aesthetic taste that describe the essence of Japanese design.