ABSTRACT
The crafts that occupy one of the galleries at the Georgia Museum of Art represent a wide variety of objects from the American South that include historical examples and works by contemporary artists who continue to combine contemporary aesthetics with cultural heritage and tradition. The vernacular objects were used in typical households in the region and are recognizable to many museum visitors. Museum educators can expand the horizons of visitors by considering the relevance of the objects in the lives of museum audiences and building experiences around them. Finding opportunities to touch and to create affects visitors’ experiences with objects. Encouraging not only children but also adults to feel the textures, weight, and materials of these objects, and to simply be with the materials, offers them direct connections between the works of art on display through sight and the other senses, as well as their own environments.
