On a misty morning a few years ago while exploring the coast of Maine, I had a chance to visit the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Now forget whatever the word "crafts" brings to mind. Founded in 1950, this school on the shores of rugged Deer Isle has long been an incubator for American design and crafts. Experimental, radical and cutting edge, Haystack artists defined midcentury modern and the school had been on my wishlist for ages.
The reasons for my enthusiasm for Haystack were the now-legendary artists who came to work and to teach there. In the early days, they included the likes of Anni Albers, Dale Chihuly, Robert Ebendorf, Jack Lenor Larsen, M.C. Richards, and Toshiko Takaezu, who taught there in the 1950s and contributed to a dynamic community of craftspeople who broke new ground across a wide range of media. Among them, Albers, a textile designer, was a student and eventually a teacher at the Bauhaus, as well as the first textile designer to have an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Larsen has continued to have an outsize effect on the direction of American design over a very long career while Chihuly has gone on to become one of the most popular contemporary artists in America, a maestro of glassworks.
However, unless you’re a student, you can’t really experience Haystack, except for a limited stroll on the grounds, which is what my wife and I did. There are guided studio visits once a week on Wednesdays at 1PM. Otherwise, the policy, which is eminently sensible, is not to disturb the artists in residence. No matter, the magic is there.
But the good news is that 150 miles south of Deer Isle this summer, the Portland Museum of Art (PMA) is mounting an exhibition, In the Vanguard: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, 1950-1969. The exhibit, running from May 24–September 8, 2019, explores how an experimental school in rural Maine transformed art, craft, and design in the 20th century and helped define the aesthetics of the nation’s counterculture. Haystack was experimental, offering communal living within a natural landscape, filled with the vibrancy of post-war teachers and student.
The pine-clad setting of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, which overlooks Jericho Bay, has to be one is one of the most stunning of any school in America. That’s especially true for fans of modernist architecture. The buildings were designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes in 1959, and take the school to another aesthetic level. Barnes was a midcentury architect, known for concrete and steel skyscrapers in major American cities, such as the former IBM tower and the Citigroup Center in New York City. But Haystack is what many aficionados consider his finest and most sublime work. It’s a “campus” of grey shingled structures, with interconnected wooden decks. The buildings maximize light but also afford privacy. There are spaces for communal gathering but also plenty of tranquil spots for reflection. All of this is tucked into a coastal forest of mossy rocks and pines, with views out to sea.
The exhibit will feature more than 90 works of art, including textiles, ceramics, glass, metalwork, paintings, and prints, as well as newly discovered correspondence, photographs, brochures, posters, and magazine articles from the Haystack archive.
It’s an exhibit that will be worthy of a road trip to Portland, the hipster capital of Maine, famed for its food scene, vitality and its artistic sensibility.