RAM Director Elected to Receive One of the Highest Honors in the
Field of American Craft   

The Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI is pleased to announce that RAM Executive Director and Curator of Collections, Bruce W. Pepich has been elected as a 2012 Honorary Fellow by the American Craft Council (ACC). The prestigious American Craft Council Awards recognize individuals and organizations for excellence in craftsmanship and significant contributions to the field of contemporary American craft.   

Pepich earned a BA Degree in Art History from Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois in 1974. Later that year he was hired as a Project Manager at the Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, and be

Photo: Skip Simonson

came its Director in 1980. Since then, Pepich has grown the museum into a two-site institution, raising over 10 million dollars in a capital campaign to open the Racine Art Museum (RAM), an off-shoot of Wustum, with an award-winning new building in downtown Racine. Under his leadership, RAM has expanded its craft collection to be one of the largest in the country that includes seminal works like Toshiko Takaezu's Star Series. Pepich has received The Ann Koski Professional Excellence Award from the Wisconsin Federation of Museums, 2010; The State of Wisconsin Governor's Award in the Arts from the Wisconsin Foundation for the Arts and Governor Jim Doyle of the State of Wisconsin, 2010 and the Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award from the Museum of Wisconsin Art, Wisconsin Visual Arts, and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters in 2011.

Since 1975, the Council has bestowed the title of Fellow to artists nominated and elected by their peers and who have demonstrated extraordinary artistic ability and must have worked 25 years or more in the discipline or career in which they are being recognized. Each Awardee is featured in the October/November 2012 issue of American Craft magazine and will be honored at the 2012 American Craft Council Awards Ceremony, November 2nd at the InterContinental Hotel Chicago. The Ceremony is open to the public; tickets can be purchased by contacting the American Craft Council at 612-206-3100 or online.

Other 2012 American Craft Council Awards recipients include Sharon Church, Anne Currier, Andrea Gill, Lewis Knauss, Tom Loeser (also from Wisconsin), Dante Marioni, Sherri Smith, Stephen De Staebler, Sidney D. Rosoff, and Nancy M. McNeil.