Don’t envy Lowery Stokes Sims, the curator of the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan, her many recent trips to Latin America. As the force behind New Territories, the museum’s survey of recent design in 14 countries (through April 6), Sims maintained a punishing schedule of studio visits; her itineraries and notes are viewable on iPads in the museum’s ingenious “Curator Lab.” Sims discovered many more worthwhile items, most of them by young designers, than the museum had room for.
Her other challenge was finding a way to organize hundreds of objects that defy easy categorization. They range from efforts at what she calls “upcycling” (for example, chairs made from steel drums by Venezuelan artist Rolando Pena) to traditional crafts given contemporary twists (such as rugs decorated with QR codes, by Chilean artist Guillermo Bert, in collaboration with various weavers). Then there are artworks with political overtones. The Peruvian artist Lucia Cuba, for instances, makes dresses dedicated to the victims of that country’s forced sterilizations.
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