In Conversation: Nicolas Trembley and Laura Hoptman on Craft

Join curator and author Nicolas Trembley in conversation with The Drawing Center’s Executive Director Laura Hoptman to celebrate the launch of Trembley’s new book Craft: About Exhibitions, Craft, Art, Cultural Hierarchies, Typologies and the Art of Display, published by After 8 Books and designed by Zurich-based graphic design studio Norm.

Bringing together more than fifteen years of exhibitions, research, and writing, Craft examines the shifting relationship between contemporary art and craft and the cultural hierarchies that have historically separated them. Drawing on exhibitions exploring ceramics, textiles, vernacular objects, and the philosophy of the Japanese Mingei movement, Trembley examines how display, classification, and context shape the way objects are perceived and valued. At a moment of renewed attention to craft within contemporary art, the book considers how artists, curators, and institutions are revisiting these distinctions and challenging established categories.

Craft is also a book about books. Publications, exhibition catalogues, artists’ books, and printed matter have been central to Trembley’s research and curatorial practice, functioning both as sources and as spaces of display in their own right.