The Museum’s lost craft

The contemporary museum is caught in a paradox. On the one hand, it aspires to be an accessible, democratic space, an arena for cultural discourse and social engagement. On the other, it struggles to maintain its original function as a sanctuary of artistic contemplation and rigorous scholarship. In attempting to balance these two imperatives, many institutions have drifted towards a didactic approach that prioritises simplified and politicised narratives over more nuanced explorations, including that of the artistic techniques that governed Western history. As a result, the craft behind high art is sometimes obscured, reduced to an incidental feature or second-class interest rather than an essential, albeit messy, component of artistic greatness. 

As in other corners of the arts and their related educational programmes or academic disciplines, many curators have absorbed a prevailing scepticism towards traditional skills and creative processes. This tendency owes much to the conceptual turn in modern art since Duchamp, where the idea is privileged over its execution; but is now driven by new ideological tenets. Today, the curator-as-artist model — borrowed from Paul Neill’s The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s) (2016) — generally defers to thematic framing and discursive interpretations aligned with external socio-political agendas. The overwhelming emphasis on current meta-discourses comes at the expense of showcasing the craftsmanship and technique inherent in the artworks themselves, particularly when presenting Western historical art, where ideological biases frequently distort its framing. 

Even when these curators turn their attention to craft, they likely frame it as functional objects such as knitted or carved works, absorbed into the same ideological framework that serves pre-packaged narratives on sexism, racism and inclusivity, for instance, as though craft were incapable of standing on its own aesthetic merits. A recent retrospective that fell a bit too deep inside that trap was Heague Yang: Leap Year (at the Southbank Centre). The sterility of the socio-political discourse behind Yang’s artwork, propelled by a curatorial death-kiss, flattened the jubilation which ordinarily emerges from the type of techniques and materials gathered — giant mobile structures that no one could touch; hand-knitted yarn, pom-poms and Korean paper that often felt gimmicky and lifeless.

In my experience, however, the best exhibitions do precisely the opposite: they guide the visitor towards an appreciation of how something is made, not just what it represents, without patronising or over-complicated commentary. To witness the craft behind a masterpiece — to see the subtle gradations of a brushstroke, the carved precision of a moulding, or the material ingenuity of a print — with concision and simplicity leads the audience to a better understanding and appreciation of the intellectual and physical labour that defines true artistry.

Few exhibitions achieve this delicate balance between context and craft. Charles Le Brun, Le Peintre du Roi-Soleil at the Louvre-Lens in 2016, sumptuously curated by Bénédicte Gady and Nicolas Milovanovic, set a standard for me. It unravelled the meticulous techniques that allowed Le Brun to embody the grandeur of Louis XIV’s reign. The show did not simply celebrate his influence but invited the viewer into the mechanics of his artistic production across media, from painting to tapestry and design. Similarly, I recall that the 2019 Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay provided visitors with revelatory insights into Morisot’s methods, situating her not only within the Impressionist movement but also within the traditions that shaped her painterly language.

A comparable depth of inquiry characterises Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious, currently on display at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. The first major retrospective of this often-overlooked artist and printmaker, the exhibition sheds light on Garwood’s mastery across diverse media — wood engraving, marbled paper, and intricate collage. While her husband, Eric Ravilious, is often the better-known figure, the show resists framing Garwood merely in relation to him, allowing her distinctive style and technical prowess to take centre stage. The result is an exhibition that reveals not just what Garwood created, but how she created it.

Throughout the circuit, beautifully arranged among the unique collection of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, Tirzah Garwood emerges as an artist who thrived despite adversity. She refined a “sophisticated naïve” aesthetic that imbued seemingly straightforward subjects with layers of meaning. Her satirical eye is evident in her early self-portraits, where she playfully subverted expectations, and in works such as Relations (1929), which depicts her family with a sharp but affectionate wit. Garwood’s technical prowess was recognised early — she was already exhibiting with The Society of Wood Engravers within a year of beginning her studies under Ravilious at the Eastbourne School of Art. While he introduced her to wood engraving, Garwood’s own influence on Ravilious is often overlooked: it was she who encouraged him to explore scenes of everyday life, a hallmark of his later work.

Beyond pictures and engraving, the Dulwich exhibition highlights Garwood’s overlooked contributions to decorative arts. Her experimental marbled papers, commissioned by publishers and interior designers, reveal an exquisite sense of pattern and composition. Juggling her artistic career with motherhood, she pioneered a delicate, layered style that stood apart from her European contemporaries. Tender pencil sketches of her children — John, James, and Anne — offer an intimate counterpoint to her sharper, satirical works, demonstrating a breadth of artistic approach that resists easy categorisation. As the family friend Olive Cook observed, “No telling detail escapes the gimlet, satirical eye of the youthful artist who shows complete command of the medium.” Garwood’s art is not merely decorative but deeply analytical, with each line and texture revealing a considered choice.

This same attentiveness to craft can be seen in Makers of Modern Gothic: A.W.N. Pugin and John Hardman Jr at the V&A. Two carefully decorated rooms showcase a newly acquired collection of drawings by architect Augustus Pugin, leading figure of the gothic revival in 19th-century England, illustrating his collaborations with the metalworking firm of John Hardman & Co., and master builder George Myers. The gathering of more than 700 drawings is a story in itself, shaped by the hurdles encountered during the pandemic and the unwavering resilience of the museum’s team in securing these works. 

Instead of keeping those in research archives, the exhibition foregrounds the craft legacy in Pugin’s work, thereby reaffirming V&A’s foundational mission of celebrating fine art, craft, and design. Comparisons between the sketches — including sections of the Parliament, details of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and striking objects of Christian devotion that reflect Pugin’s conversion to Catholicism — are enhanced by their organisation across space and the insightful, yet minimal, commentary that accompanies them. Page after page, the informal, unwritten process of creation emerges and takes centre stage, unveiling the cogs within the formidable creative engine of 19th-century Gothic renewal.

Pugin himself embodied the symbiosis between concept and craftsmanship, not least in his reliance on long-term collaborators who could anticipate his vision from the minimal instructions he provided. His designs for the British Parliament and Ramsgate Abbey — the first Benedictine monastery to be built in England since the Reformation, which almost bankrupted Pugin — exemplify this collective dimension of craft, where execution was as intellectually driven as conception. For his proposal regarding the clockface on the Elizabeth tower (1845-52), Pugin only drew the essential details, trusting Hardman to multiply the ornament and fill in the gaps. Guided in his activities by what must have been a refined sense of humour, Pugin teased his manufacturer partner about the very craftsmanship process that bind them. In a drawing for Niches for St Marie’s Church, Southport, the handwritten instructions stipulate to Hardman that “You have plenty of fleur-de-lis but if you can’t get them right … I will draw them out for the 50000th time.”

Pugin’s commitment to ornament, rejected by much of today’s design and architecture, was not a matter of mere embellishment but a philosophical stance: beauty, he believed, was an essential quality, not a superfluous one. His intricate tracery, stained glass compositions, and meticulously detailed furniture designs affirm the argument that craft is not subordinate to function but integral to the aesthetic and spiritual resonance of a space. In an adjacent room, outside the exhibition, stands a magnificent harpsichord. Designed by John Broadwood in 1883, a friend and client of William Morris, Sir Edward Burne-Jones (who decorated it), and other pre-Raphaelite artists, the musical instrument offers as yet another testament to layered craftsmanship artists, and invites visitors to continue their exploration of craft as they delve deeper into the museum.

These great exhibitions don’t just show art — they teach us to see it. They peel back the layers of creation, revealing the trial and error, the practiced hand, and the sharp intelligence behind each work. The curatorial mind behind highlights that technique is not mere mechanics but the bridge between vision and execution. When craft is given the spotlight, we see not just the final flourish but the artist at work, mid-thought, mid-motion. This is a welcome reminder that genuine appreciation requires more than passive observation. Exhibitions such as these, which return craft to its rightful place at the heart of artistic achievement, stand against the tide of abstraction and reaffirm the museum’s most valuable role: to reveal, with clarity and rigour, the hands that shape beauty.