Fuller Craft Museum
My second stop during my adventure last Sunday was Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA. This small, two-story museum with an outdoor sculpture garden doubles as a venue for programs and events, weddings, and classes. Five exhibits were on display during my visit, including a portrait collection, illustrations by a local high schooler, a basketball-inspired installation, button-ladened fashion pieces, and sci-fi sculptures.
Displayed in the exhibit space on the top floor just past the reception desk and gift shop, machinist-artist Chris Bathgate created decorative pieces that would look at home in a high-tech sci-fi franchise like Star Trek. He included beautiful technical drawings with many of the pieces to demonstrate how they were put together with technical precision. At the bottom of the stairs, an installation of pastel basketballs, matching nets, and a mural blend Maria Molteni’s love of crafts and sport. Sketches by the museum’s first Emerging Artist in Residence, Destiny Cater, hung in a row in a quiet hallway.
In another hallway were pieces from the museum’s permanent collection. New Mexico Sunset by Eddie Dominguez was a large earthenware bowl painted bright colors and hung on the wall. Aquarium by Silas Kopf, a wooden chest set on a matching table, was decorated with fish and an octopus. I also loved the Frog Burger by David Gihooly, with a cute ceramic frog peeping out from the buns of a ceramic hamburger. A locally decorated Calico Dress purported to be part of a larger collection, but the other dresses were no longer on display. At the opposite end of this hallway were portraits from the Arthur S. Goldberg Collection, on loan from a living collector who lives in Chestnut Hill. My favorite was a portrait series by Sergei Isupov painted on porcelain, which featured a pair of women holding ugly cats.
Detailed signage described how the Fuller Craft Museum came to be. In the 1940s, Brockton Enterprise newspaper publish Myron L. Fuller created a trust with the order to create a cultural organization once the fund had reached $1 million. After visiting Fitchburg Art Museum in 1964, DeCordova museum director Frederick P. Walkley declared that Brockton also needed an art museum. Architect Doris Cole of J. Timothy Anderson & Anderson (now Finegold Alexander Architects, which last appeared in “Historic New England Summit 2023 | Day 2” during a panel on embodied carbon) designed a modernist style building based on Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. (Brief research reveals that this museum is named not for for French King Louis XIV like the state, but by the museum’s Alexander Brun, who was supposedly married three separate times, all to women named Louise, although his Find a Grave profile only lists one Louise.) Comparisons to the unique architecture of the museum include buildings in the Bauhaus movement like Gropius House, the organic modernism of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the reconstructed Pilgrim housing at Plimoth Patuxet Museum (formerly Plimoth Plantation). Across from this signage was a Lion Bench by Boston furniture designer Judy Kensley McKie with the command to SIT ON IT, which I promptly did.
The final indoor exhibit was Beau McCall: Buttons On! Artist and fashion designer Beau McCall creates artwork covered in buttons, from bathtubs and school desks to clothing. His works have appeared in New York Fashion Week and on PBS. Perhaps the best part about this exhibit was a brief documentary where the artist explained his background and methodology behind his work. I also enjoyed an interactive display where visitors could have their pictures taken with their heads through the center of oversized cardboard buttons.
After briefly stopping in what appeared to be a cafeteria minus the food, I saw the sculptures installed in the water. The best known sculpture was aptly named “Duck” by Leo Sewell. More sculptures stood in the gardens at the front of the museum. By the road was “Glace Bay, 1974” by George Greenamyer, who welded and forged the industrial-inspired steel installation after visiting a town in Nova Scotia by the same name. The simplest sculpture was “X’s and O’s #2“ by Rob Lorenson, with a set of metal characters looking exactly as the name described. To the left of the stairs going into the museum was a humanoid mouse holding a red bird by Dale Rogers, a prolific sculptor whose work appeared on the Meredith Sculpture Walk and throughout Putnam, CT.
The entire Fuller Craft Museum experience takes about an hour. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. Admission is technically free, although donations are very strongly encouraged by the receptionist at $12 for adults and $10 for seniors, which is not listed on the website. This is among the few museums that has enough of seating options in its exhibit area, both indoor and outdoor. The entire space is well-lit and accessible for people using wheelchairs and limited mobility. I do wish the website provided a map of the museum. Otherwise, the accessibility was excellent.
Abby Epplett’s Rating System
Experience: 6/10
Accessibility: 9/10