Cincinnati Art Museum
Cincinnati, OH
October 10, 2025 – January 4, 2026
Recall. Reframe. Respond. The Art of Paul Scott at the Cincinnati Art Museum, is Scott’s eighth solo exhibition to feature works from his New American Scenery series that debuted in 2019 at the RISD Museum. At CAM, over fifty works are installed in dialog with selections from the permanent collection presented in two expansive galleries devoted to his work and in interventions in the American Art galleries. Invited to visit Cincinnati in 2024, by curator of decorative arts and design, Amy Dehan, Paul researched the collection identifying themes in response to iconic artworks in the permanent collection. Exploring contemporary issues related to current and past events in the Ohio community led to a collaboration with artist and printmaker Terence Hammonds.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
At first glance, artist Paul Scott’s transfer-printed tableware* may look familiar—like something you have seen in your grandparents’ china cabinet or a second-hand shop. Look closer and you will notice subtle differences that add up to a powerful narrative shift. Scott (British, b. 1953) subverts this seemingly unassuming blue-and-white “cultural wallpaper” to create sharp, thought-provoking social commentary. Working with new ceramic forms or repurposing antique pieces, Scott breaks, reassembles, erases, and adds details using screenprinting, engraving, and collage processes to create new “historical” patterns. Broadly, his works address updated narratives about art, history and American experiences.
During a visit to Ohio State University in 1999, Scott encountered a new genre of historical blue-and-white transferware. Beginning in the mid-1800s, manufacturers in Staffordshire, England, produced these objects specifically for American collectors. Long familiar with British transfer-printed ceramics, Scott knew little about those made for export—wares that memorialized certain American figures, landscapes, architecture, industries, and historical events. Since then, Scott has become one of a long line of travelers and observers who have visited and then written about or depicted this country, offering an outsider’s perspective. To this end, the artist’s New American Scenery series reflects his personal experiences of being and traveling in America, and, in his words, the need to “rebalance the narrative with something more contemporary and inclusive.”
Ripe for reframing and responding, the museum’s American art collections will serve as a springboard for Scott to present existing and new works, inviting various perspectives and initiating conversations about our shared American experience.
*Transfer-printed ware, or transferware, describes industrially produced ceramic tableware that has a decorative pattern applied by transferring a print first from an engraved copper plate to special paper and finally to the ceramic’s surface. This term also applies to modern wares with printed graphic surfaces made using more recent printmaking techniques and decal transfer technologies.
PRESS
Ceramic artist Paul Scott on his work and exhibitions
The most enjoyable thing I do, without doubt, is realising art works. The big jug I did last year for the Confected, Borrowed and Blue exhibition at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont was typical of what I do: researching a particular institution or collection and then creating a response to it. At the moment, there are two pieces in particular that I’m working on – two pieces for the Cincinnati which I still haven’t quite resolved. But I know what will happen: as soon as I start collaging, it will fall into place. In order to do that, I’ve done about a year’s worth of research, but I’ve learned that if I just follow the processes, eventually the old brain cells and ideas will catch up with it.
See ‘Recall. Reframe. Respond. The Art of Paul Scott’ at the Cincinnati Art Museum
Blue-and-white China may evoke memories of a grandmother’s cabinet or a dusty shelf in a thrift store, but when British artist Paul Scott reworks traditional transferware (a special kind of pottery design popularized in England during the mid-18th-century), the results are anything but nostalgic.
From Oct.10, through Jan. 4, the Cincinnati Art Museum presents “Recall. Reframe. Respond. The Art of Paul Scott,” an exhibition of more than 100 works that transform historic decorative arts into thought-provoking commentaries on contemporary life.
English, b. 1953, Darley Dale, Derbyshire, England
lives and works in Cumbria, UK
Paul Scott is a Cumbrian-based artist with a diverse practice and an international reputation. Creating individual pieces that blur the boundaries between fine art, craft and design, he is well known for research into printed vitreous surfaces, as well as his characteristic blue and white artworks in glazed ceramic.
Scott’s artworks can be found in public collections around the globe – including The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design Norway, the Victoria and Albert Museum London, National Museums Liverpool, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh and Brooklyn Art Museum USA. Commissioned work can be found in a number of UK museums as well as public places in the North of England, including Carlisle, Maryport, Gateshead and Newcastle Upon Tyne. He has also completed large-scale works in Hanoi, Vietnam and Guldagergård public sculpture park in Denmark.
A combination of rigorous research, studio practice, curation, writing and commissioned work ensures that his work is continually developing. It is fundamentally concerned with the re-animation of familiar objects, landscape, pattern and a sense of place. He was Professor of Ceramics at Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) from 2011–2018. Scott received his Bachelors of Art Education and Design at Saint Martin’s College and Ph.d at the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design in Manchester, England.
His current research project New American Scenery has been enabled by an Alturas Foundation artist award, Ferrin Contemporary, and funding from Arts Council England. More on New American Scenery, here.
INQUIRE
Additional works may be available to acquire, but not listed here.
If interested in lists of all works and series: Send us a message
