Handle with Care

Handle with Care is a collections-based exhibition focusing on a typically overlooked part of many objects such as vessels, cutlery, weapons, hand mirrors, and so on: the handle. How does this crucial design element invite us into the world of objects—their look and feel, their orientation, their weight? How do handles engage and leverage our ability, or accommodate our disability, to grasp and use tools, one of the most fundamental aspects of our humanity? The exhibition shuttles between the universal and the particular, cutting across traditional divisions of geography, chronology, and object classifications, engaging a broad swath of the Cantor’s historical collection in new, imaginative ways.

Handle with Care is organized by the Cantor Arts Center and curated by Patrick R. Crowley, Associate Curator of European Art. We gratefully acknowledge sustained support for Handle with Care provided by The Halperin Exhibitions Fund.