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Keynote Speech
Tradition and Innovation: Basketry Today

By Kenneth R. Trapp

Kenneth R. Trapp is the Curator-in-Charge of the Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. His message was a call for craft artists to be recognized as full-fledged artists and to gain the full representation they deserve. He maintained that too often craft artists and those in the craft world are overlooked, stereotyped, marginalized, dismissed or derided in museums, school curricula and the canons of art history. He stated that we must define who we are and not allow others to define us. He encouraged all of us to become militant in the support of our art. He challenged us to rise up in righteous anger in the defense of funding at the local, state and federal level for support of the craft arts. Make demands of your local museum if craft artists are not represented in collections. Lobby your local school boards for the inclusion of visual arts in the schools. He explained that there is not one healthy museum specifically dedicated to craft and even if there were one, one is not enough. He decried that University curricula in the crafts is generally unavailable and he spurred us to challenge that reality. He expressed dismay that a comprehensive history of the American Craft Movement does not exist. He shared with us his dream that "We as a body, replicated in this audience and throughout the country, march on Washington in protest". We were all urged to become active, make legitimate demands for support and respect for the Crafts Movement and lobby for a Visual Arts Education Policy at a national level. He closed with an admonition to "Take back our history. Until we write our history, we won't have a history."

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