A great retrospective on Marilyn Pappas at the Fuller Craft Museum

Fuller Craft Museum is proud to present the first museum retrospective of Somerville textile artist Marilyn Pappas. The exhibition features 21 works representing all stages of her 60-year career, from her socially minded, garment-based work of the 1960s to her travel-inspired collages to her outsized textiles depicting sculptures of ancient goddesses. At once timeless and highly relevant to today, Pappas’s forms chronicle the many stages of her life while offering powerful statements on the enduring strength, vibrancy, and resilience of women.

A native of Brockton, Pappas studied art at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Pennsylvania State University and is a Professor Emerita from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including The National Endowment of the Arts and The Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College. Her work is in many public and private collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Museum of Arts and Design, NYC, and the DeYoung Museum, San Francisco.

Pappas has always been attracted to processes that demand sustained attention. It is not possible to unravel the skein of sequence, to point to a place where she started, or stopped, or dwelled at length in the middle. Temporality exists in her work not in the guise of “time’s arrow,” but rather as a thick, textured, layered phenomenon, more akin to remembering the past than experiencing the moving present. This same effect is also conveyed by the found objects and materials in her early assemblages—hailing from multiple moments, but all bound together—and the ancient subject matter of her later works, which she renders strikingly contemporary.

– Glenn Adamson, from his essay, Marilyn Pappas: Stitching in Time

The term “retrospective” implies a look back, a focus on the past. In considering Marilyn’s work, this inference seems overly limiting, even inaccurate, largely because her practice remains firmly rooted in the present. Her socially charged themes—feminism, political resistance, beauty and aging, love and loss—ring as true today as they did in the years in which they were created, over five decades ago in some cases. And while a retrospective may insinuate a tapering creative output, this is certainly not the case for Marilyn. At 91, she shows no signs of slowing down.

Producing a retrospective exhibition can be a daunting task. The challenge of capturing an artist’s life’s work—the complexities of the making process, the myriad sources of inspiration, the interlocking dimensions that make up a creative existence—requires significant responsibility and care. Developing Marilyn Pappas: A Retrospective was no exception, yet throughout Marilyn was a dream collaborator, bringing tremendous knowledge, inspiration, and humanity to the process.

– Beth C. McLaughlin, Artistic Director and Chief Curator, Fuller Craft Museum

Fuller Craft Museum offers expansive opportunities to discover the world of contemporary craft. By exploring the leading edge of craft through exhibitions, collections, education, and public programs, we challenge perceptions and build appreciation of the material world. Our purpose is to inspire, stimulate, and enrich an ever-expanding community.

Source: Fuller Craft Museum, April 7, 2022
Fuller Craft Museum is located at 455 Oak Street in Brockton, Massachusetts.
https://fullercraft.org/