To be sure, the argument over what you call craft, and whether you celebrate it by waving its flag or dissolving its boundaries, can seem academic. “I think we get too focused on the definition and not focused on celebrating and exploring what’s actually being created,” says the Craft Council’s Branagan, who doesn’t buy into the postcraft idea. (“We’re not going to become the Council formerly known as Craft,” she jokes.) But in the real world, do the definitions make a difference?

From a market standpoint, the answer is unclear. “In the 1990s and early 2000s, you could argue that putting something in a contemporary-art [versus a craft or design] sale would generate larger prices,” says Zemaitis, of Sotheby’s, which until 2002 held craft sales under the rubric Contemporary Works of Art. “But it’s gotten a bit blurred, and now I think the prices would generally be about the same.” Jones, the Bonhams specialist, concurs: “People are willing to pay more for a good piece, regardless of the material.”

Ask MAD director Hotchner, however, and you hear an entirely different story. The title American Craft Museum deterred not only sponsors and funders, “many of whom did not relate to the idea of craft,” she says, but also press coverage and audiences—even artists and shows from other institutions. For example, “Betty refused to show at the Craft Museum,” Protetch says of Woodman, who considers herself an artist first and foremost. “She held out for the Met.” Since MAD’s rebranding, according to Hotchner, things have improved on all fronts.

However, this past August, the museum pulled another surprise when it announced that its new deputy director for curatorial affairs, Barbara Bloemink, had left after just seven months on the job. By all accounts, the split was amicable. “I don’t want to work with boundaries [between disciplines] anymore,” explains Bloemink, who had come to the Museum of Arts & Design with a background in, well, art and design. But wasn’t the whole point of the museum’s new name to break with boundaries? Bloemink, a museum statement read, “was not a good fit [with] MAD’s continuing emphasis on contemporary crafts, art and design as a reflection of the museum’s craft heritage.” Sure enough, craft may be dead, but long live craft.

"The C**** Word" originally appeared in the November 2007 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's November 2007 Table of Contents.