Crafting Democracy: Fiber Arts and Activism calls upon craft, during an era of political disruption, as a creative force to voice dissent, express hope, critique the curtailment of civil rights, and to restore dignity to the human experience. The essays and artwork featured in this exhibition catalogue are framed within the context of American democracy and disclose how we, as individuals and as a culture, “craft democracy” and ultimately question what democracy means today.

For the exhibition schedule, visit https://www.craftingdemocracy.com/

Juilee Decker is associate professor of museum studies at Rochester Institute of Technology. Decker is a scholar and practitioner of museum studies and public history. Her publications include the 3^rd edition of Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums (2017) and the four-volume series Innovative Approaches for Museums (2015). Her monograph, Sculpting Her Legacy: Enid Yandell, Kentucky’s Pioneer Artist, is forthcoming from University Press of Kentucky. Decker earned her PhD from the joint program in Art History and Museum Studies at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

HInda Mandell is associate professor in the School of Communication at Rochester Institute of Technology and is a co-editor of Nasty Women and Bad Hombres: Gender and Race in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election (University of Rochester Press, 2018); the author of Sex Scandals, Gender and Power in Contemporary American Politics (Praeger, 2017) and co-editor of Scandal in a Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). She is editor of Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats (forthcoming with Rowman & Littlefield). Her website is omghinda.com and her Twitter account is: @hindamandell and @crochetactivism.