Wonder

Wonder looks at the whole notion of discovery and awe in the presence of marvellous things. As well as nine specially commissioned works by leading contemporary artists, including Jennifer Angus, Chakaia Booker, Gabriel Dawe, Tara Donovan, Patrick Dougherty, Janet Echelman, John Grade, Maya Lin, and Leo Villareal, this thought-provoking new volume features twenty-seven unique objects drawn from history.

Nicholas R. Bell is The Fleur and Charles Bresler Senior Curator of American Craft and Decorative Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He has been a curator at the museum since 2009. His research interests include American craft, decorative art in America from the 17th through the 21st centuries, folk and self-taught art, and theories of material culture.

Bell is organizing the reopening exhibition following the Renwick Gallery’s two-year renovation. Titled WONDER, the project turns over the whole of the museum to site-specific installations by nine major contemporary artists. Bell previously curated the highly praised Renwick Gallery’s 40th anniversary exhibition,40 under 40: Craft Futures (2012). Other recent exhibitions includeUntitled: The Art of James Castle (2014), for which he was the author of the accompanying catalogue. He is also editor of the anthologyNation Building: Craft and Contemporary American Culture, based on the proceedings of the Renwick Gallery’s 40th anniversary symposium. He has written for a variety of publications includingWinterthur Portfolio and American Furniture.

Bell earned a bachelor’s degree from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia (2005), and a master’s degree from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware (2008).