User:RKlassen/Paul J. Smith

Paul J. Smith is Director Emeritus of the Museum of Arts and Design (formerly American Craft Museum). In 1957, he joined the staff of the American Craftsmen's Council, the parent organization of the Museum at the time. In 1963, he was appointed Director. Smith played a pivotal role in the museum's relocation to 40 West 53rd Street in 1986, at which time its name was changed from the Museum of Contemporary Crafts to the American Craft Museum. He assumed the position of Director Emeritus in September 1987 and works as an independent consultant in the craft and design field.

A native of upstate New York, Smith attended the Art Institute of Buffalo and the School for American Craftsmen (now School for American Crafts) at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts by Parsons The New School for Design. He is an Honorary Fellow of the American Craft Council and an Honorary International Member of the Canadian Craft Council. In 2009, he was awarded the Aileen Osborn Webb Award for Philanthropy.

Since 1963, Smith has been responsible for presenting over 200 exhibitions, ranging from surveys of contemporary craft to one-artist retrospectives. He curated CRAFT TODAY: Poetry of the Physical, the inaugural exhibition for the 53rd Street location, which toured nationally after its New York premiere. A revised version, CRAFT TODAY USA, was assembled to tour fifteen European cities under the auspices of the United States Information Agency's Arts America program. In 2001, as project director and guest curator for the American Craft Museum, he organized OBJECTS for USE: Handmade by Designer.

Smith was a curatorial advisor for OBJECTS USA (1969); Craft, Art and Religion (1978), the first international craft exhibition held at the Vatican, Rome; and In Praise of Hands (1974), the first international craft exhibition held in Toronto, Canada. He has served on the juries international craft competitions, including World Glass Now (1982), shown in Sapporo, Japan. He participated in eight World Craft Council conferences, including the first one, which was held in New York City in 1964. He has traveled to India, Germany, Australia, Sweden, and Finland as an invited cultural exchange guest of their respective governments, and through the USIA he has given lectures and workshops in Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, and Botswana.

Smith has served on numerous boards and committees including those of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, the World Craft Foundation, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. He is currently a trustee of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation.

As a member of the professional committee for the Friends of Art and Preservation in Embassies's Millennium "Gift to the Nation" project, he assisted in assembling a collection of worlds for permanent placement in U.S. embassies around the world. Since 1995, he has advised The Center for United States-China Arts Exchange at Columbia University on their project dealing with nationality culture in the Yunnan Province.