Research is at the core of Chipstone’s exhibitions, publications, outreach, teaching initiatives.

Ongoing Research Projects

Object Lessons: Finding Information in Things

Material culture and the study of decorative arts are predicated on the notion that information may be drawn from the close examination of material things.  Object Lessons: Finding Information in Things is a historical and pedagogical project that developed out of Sarah Carter’s book project on the history of object lessons. The project encompasses the development of a methodology that helps students advance interpretations of material things rooted in physical evidence and encompassing both metaphor and historical context. This video suggests how a Chipstone Object Lesson may unfold. 

Object Lessons: Finding Information in Things videos

Project Chip-Lit: Material Culture and Literature

Project Chip-Lit: Material Culture and Literature explores intersections between the object-based fields of material culture and the decorative arts and a wide range of American and British literary texts.  It asks two key questions. How can literary references to material things transform the meanings of objects in museum collections? A literary approach to object study explains how objects were used, exchanged, remembered, and interpreted over time. Literary portrayals of the material enrich our understanding of historical design and object aesthetics and may suggest new approaches to museum curation. How can a deeper understanding of the material things described in literary texts enhance one’s understanding of those texts? An anthropological approach to historical objects and their materiality can help us better understand their literary role as sociocultural and political symbols. Object study may uncover the ritual or metaphorical mechanisms of object functions in texts, as students have the chance to study the objects mentioned. An expanding series of Project Chip-Lit lesson plans, short essays, and videos model the interpretative potential of the relationship between things and texts. The collaborative team includes Sarah Carter at Chipstone, Jamie Jones at Michigan and MengRuo Yang, an independent scholar.

The Dave Project: Exploring African-American Material Culture

For more than a decade the Chipstone Foundation has pursued topics related to African-American material culture, a topic often left out of American art museum exhibitions and decorative arts galleries. Many of the African-American artisans who created items in museum collections are anonymous.  The Dave Project: Exploring African-American Material Culture reflects this institutional commitment. The title refers to the Foundation’s ongoing work on David Drake, an enslaved potter who inscribed his monumental jars with couplets.  Research and exhibitions on Dave the Potter, Thomas Day, John Hemings, the enslaved makers of Southern face vessels, and other African-American artists and craftspeople reveal compelling American stories that belong in museums, schools, and in art historical and historical scholarship. The Chipstone Foundation studies and shares the objects they created, from face jugs to fine furniture, to tell their stories. 

Dave Project Curriculum Guide 
Publication, Outlasting Denial

Dave Videos