Connection between craft, war and national identity explored

Allison Smith creates large-scale multimedia installations that critically engage popular forms of historical re-enactment — including sculpture, fabrics, ceramics and other traditional crafts — to redo, restage and refigure our sense of collective memory. Beginning Friday, Feb. 5, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will showcase the artist’s most recent project: the re-creation of European and American gas masks from World War I and World War II.