Premiering on primetime television in 1970, the film With These Hands: The Rebirth of the American Craftsman was created to raise awareness for the groundbreaking and now legendary exhibition Objects USA. Featuring more than 300 artists, the exhibition put craft on the map in the art world and traveled to twenty venues in America and ten in Europe. When the exhibition tour finished, many of the works on view came to MAD, forming the core of the Museum’s permanent collection.
This full-length presentation of the documentary is a collaboration between MAD and The Journal of Modern Craft for its second issue of 2021. An essay by Mina Warchavchik Hugerth documents the making of the film and contextualizes its presentation of the artists included as a form of performative living with craft at its center.
Excerpts from the film are also on view in the Museum's exhibition Craft Front & Center (May 22, 2021–Feb 13, 2022), which includes many of the works originally seen in Objects USA.
With These Hands: The Rebirth of the American Craftsman, 1970 Video, TRT 00:54:29 Sponsored by Johnson Wax Produced by Daniel Wilson Consulting by Paul Smith and Lee Nordness Courtesy SC Johnson