Announcing the 2026 Center for Craft Archive Fellows
The Center for Craft selected four fellows researching Indigenous artistry, Black stonework, Middle Eastern embroidery and weaving, and craft practices implemented by blind individuals for the 2026 cohort.
The Center for Craft is proud to announce the 2026 Craft Archive Fellows. This fellowship advances archival research on underrepresented and non-dominant craft histories in the United States, including feminist, queer, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, intersectional, and other communities and approaches.
The four selected fellows will each receive a $5,000 honorarium to engage in both conventional and innovative approaches to archival research. Their research will be published by Hyperallergic in September 2027, reaching national and international audiences, and presented in a virtual program hosted by the Center for Craft. The program reduces physical and economic barriers to archival research, increasing the visibility and appreciation of craft scholarship in the United States.
This year’s selections were made by a distinguished panel of experts that included Lakshmi Rivera Amin, associate editor, Hyperallergic; Carla-Mae Crookendale, Arts Research Librarian and Associate Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University; and Faythe Levine, Special Collections and Public Engagement Manager, Women’s Studio Workshop.
Meet the Fellows:
Sadé DuBoise (Tigard, Oregon)
Hands That Remember: Tlingit Octopus Bags and the Transmission of Knowledge
Tlingit octopus bags fill museums but the knowledge of how to make them is very limited. Through archival visits and interviews, this research aims to recover and transmit that knowledge to younger Indigenous artists.
Shahini Fakhourie (Miami)
Threaded Resistance: Mapping SWANA Identity Through the American Warp
Recipient of the Sara Clugage Award for the Craft Archive Fellowship
Threaded Resistance explores how Middle Eastern embroidery and weaving, specifically Lebanese and Palestinian traditions, evolved as “portable homelands” in the United States. This research documents these textiles as living archives of resistance and celebration that carry cultural identity across generations of the diaspora.
Margie Merritt (Washington, DC)
Unseen Hands, Enduring Stone: Black Masonry and Memorial Craft in Tennessee
Recipient of the Ayumi Horie Award for the Craft Archive Fellowship
Unseen Hands, Enduring Stone recovers Black stoneworkers and cement carvers whose grave markers fill East Tennessee’s segregated cemeteries — makers whose labor has been preserved in stone but erased from the craft historical record.
Sarah Weston (St. Louis)
Knot, Prick, Press: Tactile Learning and Craft Networks in Schools for the Blind
Recipient of the Gallaher Family Award for the Craft Archive Fellowship
Knot, Prick, Press examines the versatile craft practices developed by blind students and their teachers in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America at schools for the blind. This research focuses on tactile media created to enhance reading, writing, and learning, such as embossed and tactile books, knot-writing, sand maps, and papier-mâché models. These practices were primarily driven by disabled readers, writers, printmakers, and artisans.
About the Center for Craft
For 30 years, the Center for Craft has catalyzed the people and practices shaping the future of making by investing in artists, expanding craft scholarship, and supporting material innovation. Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina, it has awarded more than $11 million in grants and fellowships to craft artists, researchers, and organizations across the United States. In 2028, it will open the Center for Craft Community Library and Archives, combining holdings from the American Craft Council with its existing collections to create the nation’s leading public resource on American craft.
Learn more at centerforcraft.org.
