Commentary

Elissa Auther is the Windgate Research Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design and the Bard Graduate Center. Her book, String, Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art (Minnesota, 2010), focuses on the broad utilization of fiber in American art of the 1960s and 1970s and the changing hierarchical relationship between art and craft expressed by the medium’s new visibility. She is co-editor of West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965–1977 (Minnesota, 2012). Most recently she co-curated Pretty/Dirty, a retrospective exhibition of the painter and photographer Marilyn Minter, and is the editor of the accompanying catalog.