Fran Lebowitz is on stage in the courtyard of New York’s Noguchi Museum, presenting the 2023 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize to Japanese ceramicist Eriko Inazaki. She’s just viewed the exhibition of work by the 30 finalists in the late sculptor Isamu Noguchi’s personal studio over the road. “In my opinion,” the writer tells the 500-strong crowd, “what makes something craft instead of art comes down to whether something is useful or useless. Most of those things look pretty useless to me, which makes them art.”
Inazaki cries as she accepts the prize, saying it feels like a dream she never expected to come true. Her artwork is called Metanoia, a ridiculously detailed object that looks like intricate coral or a grain of pollen under a microscope. The judges say they’ve never seen anything like it. The exhibition for the prize is the first to be displayed in Noguchi’s studio, a mark of the respect with which the Loewe prize is regarded in the art world.
