ARTISTS TALKING
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Collecting craft
Kate Day, curator of contemporary craft at Manchester Art Gallery, talks to Amanda Fielding about her work. First in a new six-part series ’Crossing over’ focusing on arts professionals and how they work with artists.
When Kate Day took up the new post of curator of contemporary craft on the decorative art team at Manchester Art Gallery (MAG) in 1997, it had been specially created to raise the profile of contemporary craft on a regional and national level, and to develop audiences. Today, craft is presented at the gallery as part of a broader visual arts practice and although there are separate decorative art, fine art and exhibitions teams, much of the work is cross-sectional: "We try to expose the commonalities of different modes of production rather than segregating objects," says Day. "We even have works by Picasso, Paolozzi, Rachel Whiteread and Richard Wentworth in the Decorative Art collection." This healthy interdisciplinary approach enables her "to concentrate on the qualities within the work, whether it is skill in the making process, exciting or innovative ideas, or challenging ways of working with materials". Responsible then for contemporary craft and more generally twentieth century craft and design on a local, regional, national and international level, Day's main duties are caring for and developing the collections, including purchasing, documentation and loans; as well as...
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