Queer Artists are Needlepainting Their Way Toward Radical Craft

It was toward the end of Karasz’s life in the 1960s and 70s that textile works began to enter fine art shows consistently, as a result of the craft movement, which pushed for the re-centering of fiber arts within the Western art canon. The movement has had meager success; textile artists that are now considered canonical eschewed traditional craft forms for the same reasons as the patriarchal exclusionists, favoring instead abstracted fiber forms. The number of accepted craft artists in fine art circles remain few, and they are predominately made up of white women.