"Ask the Curator" features 2020 Center for Craft Curatorial Fellow and "The Computer Pays Its Debt" curator, Kayleigh Perkov. Perkov will explore themes of her exhibition, in conversation with Elissa Auther, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and the William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design, Bobbye Tigerman,  Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Lisa Nakamura, Professor and Director of the Digital Studies Institute.

Perkov, Auther, Tigerman and Nakamura will join us "live" on Friday, August 14th at 2pm EDT. Have a question for the speakers? There will be opportunity to ask questions during our live Q&A!

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About the exhibition

Weaving lies at the heart of the Information Age. Many cite the Jacquard Loom as inspiration for the first computers. Yet this is where most histories stop, a move that positions craft's influence on technology as a curiosity. Works by Janice Lourie, Sonia Sheridan, Sonya Rapoport, Lia Cook, and Katherine Westphal, highlight the shared concerns and approaches that unite textiles and technology. The Computer Pays Its Debt tells the missing stories of women’s creative contributions to early computing while scrutinizing how corporations leveraged metaphors of craftwork and domesticity for commercial gain.

About the curator

Kayleigh Perkov specializes in American art viewed through the lens of craft and the decorative arts. She received her Ph.D. in Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine in 2018. Her dissertation, “Giving Form to Feedback: Craft and Technological Systems circa 1968-1974,”focuses on pioneering craftspeople who synthesized handmaking and technology. This work was supported by the Center for Craft, the Newkirk Center for Science and Society, and a predoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Her research has been published in the Journal of Modern Craft, and included in catalogues on queer collage practice and the Pattern and Decoration movement. Kayleigh has a particular interest in the digital humanities, and has worked on computational projects for the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) and the Getty Research Institute. She is currently an editor at the Journal of Modern Craft.