From April 28 to September 27, 2015, New York's Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) presents Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft and Design, Midcentury and Today, an exhibition that considers the notable contributions of women to modernism in postwar visual culture.

In the 1950s and ’60s, an era when painting, sculpture and architecture were dominated by men, women had extensive impact in alternative materials such as textiles, ceramics and metals. Largely unexamined in major art historical surveys, due to either their gender or their choice of materials, these pioneering women achieved success and international recognition, establishing a model of professional identity for future generations.

Featuring more than 100 works, Pathmakers focuses on a cadre of women—including Ruth Asawa, Edith Heath, Sheila Hicks, Karen Karnes, Dorothy Liebes, Alice Kagawa Parrott, Toshiko Takaezu, Lenore Tawney and Eva Zeisel—who were influential as designers, artists and teachers, using materials such as clay, fiber and metals in innovative ways.

Significantly, the group came to maturity along with the Museum of Arts and Design itself, which was founded in 1956 as the center of the emerging American modern craft movement.

“Pathmakers places women at the center of the midcentury modernist narrative, and makes a powerful case for the importance of craft and design media as professional pathways,” stated Glenn Adamson, MAD’s Nanette L. Laitman Director. “Founded by a woman and with half of its collection representing works by female artists, MAD continues to champion the inclusion of women in the narrative of art and design history, along with other groups that have traditionally been marginalized.”

The exhibition also highlights contributions of European émigrés, including Anni Albers and Maija Grotell, who brought with them a conviction that craft could serve as a pathway to modernist innovation. Parallels between women creating work in Scandinavia and the United States are emphasized by the inclusion of important Scandinavian designers such as Rut Bryk, Vuokko Nurmesniemi and Vivianna Torun Bülow-Hübe.

“We aim to expand the historical view of the postwar period, to showcase important artists and designers, and to introduce names that have been overlooked,” said exhibition curator Jennifer Scanlan.

The legacy of the midcentury women is conveyed through a section of the exhibition that presents works by contemporary female artists and designers that reflect and expand upon the work of the earlier generation. International and US-based artists and designers featured in this section include Polly Apfelbaum, Vivian Beer, Front Design, Christine McHorse, Michelle Grabner, Hella Jongerius, Gabriel A. Maher, Magdalene Odundo and Anne Wilson.

 Highlights from the exhibition include:

• A striking installation of four of Ruth Asawa’s singular hanging sculptures, which attracted renewed critical attention after her first retrospective in 2006, at the age of 80. The artist’s volumetric yet delicate forms drawn in the air out of wire were groundbreaking in their use of a nontraditional material.

• Marianne Strengell’s Forecast Rug for the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa). In the postwar period, Alcoa was looking for new uses for aluminum, which had seen extensive military use during World War II. The company commissioned Strengell to develop an allaluminum textile with the softness and warmth of the handwoven, bringing this industrial material into the home market.

• A wide selection of Eva Zeisel’s designs, which have come from her archives and personal collection. This includes some of her most rare designs, such as the Bellybutton room divider, a prototype that never went into production, which demonstrates Zeisel’s interest in organic form, as well as her playful sense of humor.

• Vivianna Torun Bülow-Hübe’s Vivianna Bangle Watch for Georg Jensen, which has no clasp, no numbers and a mirrored face. Torun, as she was known, said of this design, “The watch is open ended to symbolize that time should not bind us, and the dial like a mirror reminds us that life is now.”

• Margaret Tafoya’s signature “bear paw vessels,” which marry traditional Pueblo ceramic techniques with contemporary form. Tafoya, one of a small group of Native American ceramists responsible for reviving Pueblo pottery traditions in the midcentury, was the matriarch of a family of influential potters. She inspired generations of ceramics artists with the purity of her lines and the beauty of her burnished black surfaces.

• A portion of Hella Jongerius’ redesign of the United Nations Delegates’ Lounge, including a replica of the curtain of ceramic beads that covers the two-story window at the west end. Because of security restrictions at the United Nations, the curtain that is installed in the lounge is not as originally conceived. The exhibited curtain, re-created especially for Pathmakers and hand-knotted in her studio, is the design as Jongerius intended it. • Polly Apfelbaum’s large site-specific installation of her textiles inspired by the 1950s publication A Handweaver’s Pattern Book, along with her handmade ceramic beads. Each of the 30 textiles is vibrantly colored with a different pattern, using a rainbow of markers and a simple stencil.

• Gabriel A. Maher’s DE___SIGN, which investigates the ways in which design reinforces, and even helps shape, the concepts of “male” and “female.” Through a garment, as well as videos of a series of collaborations with dancers and other performers, Maher looks at stereotypically male and female posture and clothing.