Hooked on Craft

Jen DeRose -- Interior Design, 1/1/2007 12:00:00 AM

Perhaps the winter weather turns our thoughts to craft: Two museums are threading together needlework concepts, past and present. In "Laced With History" at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, 20th-century tablecloths, bed linens, and the like pair with contemporary art, such as drawings by Aric Obrosey. New York's Museum of Arts & Design takes a more unorthodox stance in "Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting." Pleating and laser cutting merge, for example, in textile designer Eugène van Veldhoven's delicate polyamide; shovels by Cal Lane mix the industrial and the ethereal.

Kohler Arts Center, January 21–May 20; 920-458-6144; jmkac.org. MAD, January 25–June 17; 212-956-3535; madmuseum.org.