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Breaking: Namita Wiggers steps down at the Museum of Contemporary Craft

By Barry Johnson
April 11, 2014
News & Notes
Namita Wiggers steps down from the Museum Of Contemporary Craft.

Namita Wiggers steps down from the Museum Of Contemporary Craft.

Namita Gupta Wiggers, the director and chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Craft, is leaving her post, Tom Manley, president of the Pacific Northwest College of Art announced today. PNCA and the museum integrated their operations in 2009.

While Wiggers served at the museum as curator, it relocated to the North Park Blocks, aligned with PNCA, doubled its collection, and generated increasingly deft exhibitions in its new space, including Ai Weiwei’s first West Coast exhibition and important looks at foundational figures in Northwest crafts, such as Betty Feves, Laurie Herrick and Ken Shores. Wiggers became both director and chief curator in 2012.

“I was first hired in 2004 to create a vision for a new kind of museum to address craft,” Wiggers said in the press release. “The partnership with PNCA has supported this work and ensures that one of the nation’s oldest institutions dedicated to craft has a renewed life as part of an urban college campus, while continuing to honor craft’s legacy. As the College transitions to the park blocks in 2015, the Museum is now fully poised to support student life, curriculum, and a newly integrated role in this next phase of a 78 year-long history.”

Wiggers will continue to work with PNCA and the museum in new roles as she pursues outside curating, consulting, and teaching opportunities and develops Critical Craft Forum, an online forum for the craft community she co-founded in 2008.

“Namita has been key in driving the Museum of Contemporary Craft to engage in significant national conversations around craft while honoring the institution’s regional legacy,” Manley said.”Her impact on the institution and the field will be felt well into the future, and we look forward to this new phase of our relationship with her.”

We’ll provide details as they arise.

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