Janet Koplos

Through her writing and scholarship, Janet Koplos has been highly influential in framing the critical discourse on contemporary craft and has contributed significantly to our knowledge of the field. A graduate of the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communications with a MA in art history from Illinois State University, Koplos has been writing about art since 1976. She has published more than 2,000 articles, reviews, and catalogue essays in the US, Europe, and Japan. She is the author of Contemporary Japanese Sculpture (1991), Gyongy Laky (2003), and co-author of Makers: a History of American Studio Craft, intended as both an important resource for the field and a much-needed college-level art history survey. Koplos was senior editor at Art in America (1990 – 2009) and served as guest editor of American Craft in 2009. She lectures, juries, and critiques frequently and is a member of the Association Internationale des Critques d’Art and the College Art Association. She has taught criticism at the Parsons New School of Design and other schools. For her numerous scholarly contributions to the field, Koplos was elected an Honorary Fellow of the American Craft Council in 2010.