Join us for an evening celebrating the visionary work of artist and designer Elizabeth Browning Jackson, whose solo exhibition RE/CONSTRUCT marks her first in over three decades. Known for pioneering shaped rugs and redefining fiber as a sculptural medium, Jackson returns with a bold body of new work in dialogue with her radical 1980s designs.

In this conversation, Jackson will speak with fellow artist and textile innovator Liz Collins about the evolution of her practice, the expressive potential of materials like fiber and metal, and the enduring significance of immersive, environmental design. Moderated by Elissa Auther, Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design, the discussion will situate Jackson’s work within a broader history of art, design, and craft—while exploring the possibilities of reconstruction, memory, and reinvention.

This talk is presented in conjunction with RE/CONSTRUCT, on view at Superhouse from November 7 through December 20, 2025.

Elizabeth Browning Jackson
Artist

Elizabeth Browning Jackson studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, the University of New Mexico, and Capella Garden, Sweden, before graduating from the San Francisco Art Institute. With a mother who studied at the Bauhaus under László Moholy-Nagy and a father whose family worked in New England’s textile industry, Jackson’s move from sculpture into furniture and rugs was both natural and inevitable.
Her innovative rug designs of the 1980s moved “art off the wall and put it on the floor,” transforming the conventions of floor coverings “out of the rectangle and into playful spirals, graphic splashes, waves, and geometric forms.” After being introduced to Rick Kaufman and the influential New York gallery Art et Industrie, she was offered a solo exhibition in September 1982.
Jackson’s early furniture and textile works embraced industrial materials—automotive paints and vinyl sourced from Canal Street hardware stores, fiberglass, and acrylic yarns—while her later practice evolved toward minimalist bent steel and richly woven wool. Working entirely through an analog design process, she creates animated compositions that evoke motion and rhythm without the use of rendering software.
Her work has been exhibited widely across the United States and internationally in Paris and Tokyo. Jackson’s pieces are included in numerous private and public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, USA), the Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, USA), and the RISD Museum (Providence, USA). Her work has been featured in Artists Design Furniture by Denise Domergue, early editions of the International Design Yearbook, and in periodicals such as the Financial Times and The New York Times.
Elizabeth Browning Jackson lives and works in Rhode Island.

Liz Collins
Artist

Liz Collins is an artist based in New York City known for pushing the boundaries of art and design in innovative and experimental work in fabric, yarn, and other materials and techniques associated with textile media. Whether in the form of textile, painting, drawing or installation, Collins frequently explores the dichotomy of structure and entropy—qualities inherent to textile that speak to the fissures present in broader architectural, political, and social structures.
Collins’ work has recently been on view in the 60th Venice Biennale, Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, and in Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, curated by Lynne Cooke and presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON; and Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. Liz Collins: Motherlode, Collins’ mid-career retrospective at the RISD Museum in Providence, RI, runs through January 11, 2026 with an accompanying monograph published by Hirmer.

Elissa Auther
Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design

Elissa Auther is the Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and the William and Mildred Lasden Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD). In this role she provides the strategic direction and creative oversight for exhibitions, acquisitions, publications, and exhibition-related programming. She is the author of the groundbreaking study String, Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art. In addition, she has published extensively on a diverse range of topics, including the history of modernism and its relationship to craft and the decorative arts, the material culture of the American counterculture, and feminist art. Her work around feminist art and culture also includes co-directing the public program Feminism & Co.: Art, Sex, Politics at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, from 2007 to 2017. In her role as a curator, recent exhibitions include Surface/Depth: The Decorative After Miriam Schapiro (2018); Vera Paints A Scarf!: The Art and Design of Vera Neumann (2019) and Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle.