Project Type: EXHIBITION

30
Jan
2025
Recall. Reframe. Respond. The Art of Paul Scott

Recall. Reframe. Respond. The Art of Paul Scott

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.

VIEW THE PRESS RELEASE

VIEW THE CHECKLIST

PRESS

Ceramic artist Paul Scott on his work and exhibitions

y Sue Allan

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.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

See ‘Recall. Reframe. Respond. The Art of Paul Scott’ at the Cincinnati Art Museum

y Maggie Amacher

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.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

ABOUT PAUL SCOTT

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.

Paul Scott, Artist Portrait, 2022

INQUIRE

Additional works may be available to acquire, but not listed here.

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29
Jan
2025
American Scenery and Souvenirs: Transferware by Paul Scott

American Scenery and Souvenirs: Transferware by Paul Scott

Lightner Museum
St. Augustine, FL

April 24, 2025 – October 27, 2025

Works from Paul Scott’s New American Scenery is presented at its 7th tour location starting April 24th, 2025. The exhibition at the Lightner Museum marks the artist’s fifth solo show in the US, spanning 2019 to 2025.

VIEW PAUL SCOTT EXHIBITION HISTORY
INQUIRE FOR EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

In American Scenery and Souvenirs British artist Paul Scott reanimates historical transferware to create new works depicting scenes from contemporary American life. 

In the nineteenth century, blue-and-white printed transferware plates portraying images of American scenery, cities, and their significant landmarks were mass-produced by potteries in Staffordshire, England for export to the US. By the turn of the twentieth century these works became tremendously popular collectibles, cherished by the American middle class as souvenirs of travel and experience. 

Paul Scott’s current work combines the visual vocabulary and processes of historical transferware with unexpected and incongruous vignettes of life in America today, engaging with themes of globalization, energy consumption, capitalism, social justice, immigration, and the environmental impact of human activity. In American Scenery and Souvenirs, nuclear power plants, decaying urban centers, abandoned industrial sites, wildfires, and border walls intrude amidst the traditionally bucolic landscape. These provocative scenes subvert the picturesque aesthetic traditionally associated with American transferware, challenging the viewer to reconsider the nation’s environmental and social realities. The exhibition presents Scott’s work in dialogue with vintage Rowland & Marsellus transferware from the Lightner Museum collection to showcase Scott’s technical and poignant interventions.

American Scenery and Souvenirs: Transferware by Paul Scott is presented at the Lightner Museum by the Community Foundation for Northeast Florida. Additional support comes from the St. Johns County Tourist Development Council and the St. Johns Cultural Council.

VIEW THE PRESS RELEASE

Newly Produced Works for the Exhibition

“[I] use print trays to house select edited remnants of our industrial past. Transferware, Staffordshire’s great gift to the world, melded the technology of the paper printer with vitreous melted cobalt blues to create mystical, exotic images on a domestic affordable scale. I harvest details from old, cracked and broken tablewares and give them new lives and meanings in collages that meld historical detail with contemporary fragments of my own printed ceramics. The tray is also a remnant, a memory of the print media revolution which helped facilitate the industrial age and enable the democratization of imagery.”

  • Paul Scott

Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Souvenirs, Collage No:1.
2025
Transferware collage, Rowland Marsellus and Adams early 20th century souvenir plates, in altered, repurposed print tray made in America
23 x 16 x 2″.
Paul Scott 2025.

‘The amount of land scorched by wildfires in California has been on the rise for decades, and human-caused climate change is almost entirely to blame.

A new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that California’s summertime burned area has increased fivefold since 1971….  and could grow by another 50 percent by 2050. More he study finds that rising temperatures and declining precipitation, fuelled by human emissions of greenhouse gases, are the primary culprit. Increasingly arid conditions have provided a surplus of dry fuel for fires to consume, causing bigger and more intense blazes as time goes on. Natural fluctuations in the Earth’s climate, on the other hand, have had little to no influence on California’s worsening fire season. The study makes it clear that human activity is at fault.’ – Chelsea Harvey, Scientific American, (June 14, 2023)…..

The California Wildfires, Los Angeles collage plate was produced in response to the devastating events of early 2025.

Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, California Wildfires,  LA Series No:1.
2025
Transferware collage on altered Rowland Marsellus Souvenir plate c.1900
10 x 10 x 1″.
Paul Scott 2025.

ABOUT PAUL SCOTT

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.

Paul Scott, Artist Portrait, 2022
22
Jan
2025
Jacqueline Bishop: THE KEEPER OF ALL THE SECRETS | London, UK

Jacqueline Bishop: THE KEEPER OF ALL THE SECRETS | London, UK

The Queen’s House, Royal Museum’s Greenwich

London, UK

Featuring Jacqueline Bishop’s The Keeper of All The Secrets

The Keeper of All The Secrets (Edition of 3)
2024
digital print on porcelain, gold lustre
12.5″

Jacqueline Bishop, "The Keeper of All The Secrets", 2023, digital print on porcelain, various dimensions, John Polak Photography

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

A healer, trader, preserver and transmitter of cultural knowledge: the role of the market woman has been central to Caribbean communities, but so often her importance has been overlooked. 

Jacqueline Bishop wanted to explore the reasons behind this. The Jamaican-born artist and poet’s work centres on “making visible the invisible […] speaking aloud the unspoken and voicing voicelessness.” Her art engages with a myriad of themes, from exile and memory to sexuality and desire, and spans mediums including paintings and textiles.

Bishop’s piece The Keeper of All The Secrets has been acquired by Royal Museums Greenwich and is now on display in the Queen’s House. It reworks a traditional British tea service, using collages of Caribbean market women and botanicals to explore women’s agency and the legacies of empire and enslavement. 

MEDIA

The Keeper of All the Secrets: Jacqueline Bishop’s Ceramic Tea Service Paperback – July 18, 2025

Jacqueline Bishop’s ceramic tea service The Keeper of All The Secrets is a new commission that will go on display in the Queen’s House at Royal Museums Greenwich in early 2025. Featuring the image of the market woman and various plants known to induce abortion, the service is a comment on colonialism, empire and the position of women in society. The figure of the market woman is a well-known symbol of the plantation system, but little has been written on her significance. She performed an illicit resistance to the plantation system, secretly assisting in the regulation of menstrual cycles and illegally terminating unwanted pregnancies, many of which are known to have been the result of rape by enslavers. This book, also featuring new poetry by Bishop and an interview, situates the market woman within the context of Caribbean enslavement and the tea trade. The tea service will be considered alongside other items in the Museum’s collection relating to colonialism and empire and provides a lens through which contemporary debates on the present-day impacts of these issues can be explored.

 

PURCHASE THE CATALOG & LEARN MORE

Portraits in porcelain preserving secrets and pouring history in London | by Arvind Passey | Apr 18, 2025

‘The keeper of all the secrets’ is now displayed in the Queen’s House at the Royal Museums Greenwich. This place is oozing with history, art, and artifacts collected from all over the world.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

The Keeper of All the Secrets: Jacqueline Bishop in conversation with Stella Dadzie

The story behind… The Keeper of All The Secrets

Artist Jacqueline Bishop speaks to historian Stella Dadzie about the influences behind her ceramic artwork, now on display in the Queen’s House

 

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO HERE

PROGRAMMING

Workshop: Sips of Wisdom

Celebrating the knowledge of African Caribbean herbs for women’s health

Saturday, March 22, 2025 | 11:30am–1:30pm

This workshop is an introduction to herbal traditions, exploring the history of African Caribbean herbs, their connections to African and Indigenous practices, and their importance for women’s health.

Inspired by artist Jacqueline Bishop’s ‘Keeper of All Secrets’ tea set, the workshop will delve into the theme of the Market Woman and her role in sharing knowledge about herbs.

As part of the session you’ll design and paint your own cup and saucer to take home. The session will include:

  • Discussion and sharing of the uses of African Caribbean herbs.
  • A guided reflection meditation on connecting to inner resilience, empowerment and ancestral knowledge across all lands.
  • Painting a cup and saucer, inspired by the knowledge learnt and shared on the day.

 

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

JOIN THE ACC IN LONDON, ENGLAND WITH JACQUELINE BISHOP

You’re invited to join the American Ceramics Circle for a three day trip to London, Cambridge and Norwich, March 19-21, 2025 to explore collections and current exhibitions.

We begin in London with a welcome reception at E & H Manners gallery on Tuesday the 18th

On Wednesday we will travel by train to Norwich where we will visit Norwich Castle Museum and the Sainsbury Centre. Friday, we will travel again by train to Cambridge where we will visit the Fitzwilliam Museum and Kettle’s Yard.

Thursday, we are invited to join the English Ceramic Circle at the Victoria & Albert Museum for a Wedgwood study day . We will meet with ceramic historian Caroline McCraffrey Howarth who will share her research on the important nineteenth-century collector Lady Charlotte Schreiber and her majestic donation of 18th-century ceramics to the V&A. We also have the opportunity to meet with V&A curator Alun Graves and visit the museum’s studio pottery collection.That evening, we are invited to attend the launch and reception of Jacqueline Bishop’s “Keeper of All The Secrets” at the Queen’s House in Greenwich.

Organized by Leslie Ferrin, Christina Prescott-Walker and Rachel Gotlieb

Fee: $45 for members, $60 for guests

All travel, meals, entry fees and hotel costs are “a la carte” – to be paid directly by attendees. The organizers will negotiate group entries, and make detailed recommendations for travel and hotels as required.

 

LEARN MORE & REGISTER

22
Jan
2025
PORCELAIN LOVE LETTERS: The Art of Mara Superior

PORCELAIN LOVE LETTERS: The Art of Mara Superior

May 10 – October 26, 2025

Curated by Kory Rogers
Francie and John Downing Senior Curator of American Art

SHELBURNE MUSEUM
6000 Shelburne Road
PO Box 10
Shelburne, VT

Ceramics Gallery, Variety Unit

For a list of available works, please email info@ferrincontemporary.com

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Porcelain Love Letters: The Art of Mara Superior

Artist Mara Superior has a deep love for porcelain—a dedication that compels her to work with this ancient and often unpredictable material. She works with slab construction and fires her pieces in a high-temperature reduction atmosphere, techniques that make the process even more challenging and increase the risk of warping or breakage.

Trained as a painter, Superior discovered the beauty and creative possibilities of porcelain in the late 1970s. Since then, she has focused entirely on this bright but delicate material, appreciating both its fragility and its strength. She describes porcelain as a “magical three-dimensional canvas,” where she carefully paints detailed, whimsical images and adds sculpted designs to create pieces that are both visually striking and rich with meaning. 

Superior’s art draws inspiration from many sources, including Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, illuminated manuscripts, Renaissance art, historical ceramics, and Americana. She blends these influences to create her distinctive and romantic style. Each piece feels like a love letter to the world—reflecting her deep affection for home, good food, the environment, and her country.

This exhibition showcases a wide range of Mara Superior’s work, from her early explorations to her latest creations. It features commissioned pieces from private collections along with deeply personal works from her own home—many of which have never been shown before. Superior considers these her most treasured pieces, reflecting both her artistic skill and creative imagination.

PROGRAMMING

Member Event: Fired and Inspired: A Conversation with Porcelain Artist Mara Superior

Saturday, June 7 | 4pm – 5pm
Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education Auditorium

Shelburne Museum welcomes its Member community to a special evening with acclaimed ceramic artist Mara Superior for an illustrated panel discussion exploring her nearly five-decade career working in porcelain. She will be joined by Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, the Anthony W. And Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Kory Rogers, the Francie and John Downing Senior Curator of American Art at Shelburne Museum.

Together, they will examine the autobiographical nature of Superior’s work, her artistic influences, and the historical precedents that inform her practice. The conversation will also consider the evolving themes in her art—including the significance of home, food, travel, fine and decorative arts, and activism—as well as what lies ahead in the next chapter of her remarkable career.

Open to Shelburne Museum Members.

Registration coming soon!

Not yet a Member? Join HERE for access to this exciting Member event!

Webinar: Artistic Eye – Seeing the World through Mara Superior’s Ceramic Art

Tuesday, April 8, 2025
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Zoom
Mara Superior, acclaimed ceramic artist known for blending delicate ceramic pieces with sharp social commentary, joins curator Kory Rogers for an engaging hour-long webinar discussion about her life, her art, and her creative inspirations. Discover how Mara’s passion for art history and world travel shapes her work, how historical subjects inspire contemporary conversations, and how she reimagines traditional forms like teapots into striking 3D sculptures. Don’t miss this exploration of creativity and innovation and learn more about Mara prior to the opening of her 2025 exhibition, Porcelain Love Letters: The Art of Mara Superior.

This event was presented live via Zoom on April 8 at 12:00 pm EDT. 

EXHIIBITION CATALOG

Mara Superior, “Porcelain Love Letters: The Art of Mara Superior”, Shelburne Museum Catalog

“Porcelain Love Letters: The Art of Mara Superior” celebrates the extraordinary ceramic work of Mara Superior, featuring essays, photography, and archival material from her career. Produced in partnership with Shelburne Museum and Ferrin Contemporary, this book offers insight into one of America’s most accomplished contemporary ceramic artists.

  • CopyrightŠ 2025
  • Published by Ferrin Contemporary in association with Shelburne Museum, 2025
  • Exhibition curator: Kory Rogers, Francie and John Downing Senior Curator of American Art
  • Artwork Photography: John Polak
  • Catalog Design: Mikulak Design
  • Porcelain Love Letters: The Art of Mara Superior is made possible by Merle and Barry Ginsburg, with additional support from Donna and Marvis Schwartz.
  • Photography made possible by the Kohler Foundation.
  • ISBN 978-0-9904312-3-7

 

PURCHASE THE CATALOG HERE

PRESS

WAMC INTERVIEW: “Porcelain Love Letters: The Art of Mara Superior”

The exhibition, “Porcelain Love Letters: The Art of Mara Superior” opens at The Shelburne Museum on May 10.

Superior’s porcelain art combines intricate painted imagery and sculptural forms through which she explores themes of history, domesticity, and environmentalism.

Trained as a painter, Superior discovered the beauty and creative possibilities of porcelain in the late 1970s. Since then, she has focused entirely on this bright but delicate material, appreciating both its fragility and its strength.

Superior’s work is inspired by many interests, including art history, patriotism, environmentalism, and everyday life at home. We welcome Mara Superior to the show along with Kory Rogers, the Francie and John Downing Senior Curator of American Art at Shelburne Museum in Vermont.

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE

ABOUT MARA SUPERIOR

Mara Superior, Artist Portrait, 2020, Photo by John Polak Photography

American, b. 1951, New York, NY
lives and works in Williamsburg, MA

Mara Superior is an American visual artist who works in porcelain. Her ceramic high relief platters and sculptural objects reflect the artist’s passion for art history and the decorative arts, and her painterly motifs range from the pleasures of the domestic to serious political and environmental issues as points of departure to comment on contemporary culture and its relationship to history. Superior has received numerous awards including a National Endowment for the Visual Arts Fellowship, the prestigious Guldaggergård Residency in Denmark, and numerous individual artist grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Superior has exhibited at the American Museum of Ceramic Art, (Pomona, CA), Scripps Women’s College, (Claremont, CA), and the Fuller Craft Museum, (Brockton, MA) among many other institutions. Her work can be found in the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, (Washington, DC), the Museum of Arts and Design, (New York, NY), the Peabody Essex Museum, (Salem, MA), Philadelphia Museum of Art, (Philadelphia, PA) the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, (Los Angeles, CA), White House Collection of American Craft, (Little Rock, AK). In 2018, through the generous support of the Kohler Foundation, gifts of art by Mara Superior were made to fifteen museums throughout the USA, increasing the public holdings of Superior’s artworks  and including an in depth collection acquired by the Racine Art Museum, (Racine, WI) and shown in 2020 in Collection Focus: Mara Superior. In 2010 she was interviewed for the oral history program of the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, (Washington, DC).

Superior studied at the Pratt Institute and Hartford Art School, completing her BFA in painting from the University of Connecticut followed by a MAT in ceramics from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She is represented by Ferrin Contemporary.

ABOUT SHELBURNE MUSEUM

Shelburne Museum is an unparalleled and unique experience of American history, art, and design. Designed to allow visitors the pleasure of discovery and exploration, the Museum includes thirty-nine distinct structures on forty-five acres, each filled with beautiful, fascinating, and whimsical objects. Come play in our gardens and open our many doors. You are welcome here.

Click to Read More HERE

SHELBURNE MUSEUM

6000 Shelburne Road
PO Box 10
Shelburne, VT 05482

Shelburne Museum Aerial Shot of Grounds. Photo courtesy of the museum.
20
Jan
2025
Emily Cole: Ceramics, Flora, and Contemporary Responses

Emily Cole: Ceramics, Flora, and Contemporary Responses

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

EMILY COLE: Ceramics, Flora & Contemporary Responses places the art of Emily Cole (1843-1913), daughter of Thomas Cole, into conversation with eight internationally-celebrated, 21st-century artists within the Cole family’s historic home and studio.

Emily Cole was an esteemed professional artist in her own right, who painted dynamic botanicals on porcelain and watercolors on paper. She exhibited and sold her art in New York City and the Hudson Valley, received critical acclaim, traveled internationally, studied at the National Academy of Design, and was a founding member in 1892 of the New York Society of Ceramic Arts, an organization that advocated for ceramics to be exhibited in museum galleries.

The exhibition will include the largest display of original painted porcelain and works on paper by Emily Cole ever shown since the 19th century. Her work will be presented alongside, and in conversation with, contemporary works that span ceramics, sculpture, installation, painting, and photography. The contemporary artists are Ann Agee, Jacqueline Bishop, Francesca DiMattio, Valerie Hegarty, Courtney M. Leonard, Jiha Moon, Michelle Sound, and Stephanie Syjuco. 

The exhibition’s curators are Kate Menconeri, Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, Contemporary Art, and Fellowship at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, and Amanda Malmstrom, Associate Curator at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. The project was developed in conversation with the featured artists and the following advisors: Jenni Sorkin, PhD, Professor of the History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara, specializing in contemporary art and material culture; Amy Meyers, PhD, former Director of the Yale Center for British Art, specializing in art and science in the transatlantic world; the artist Kiki Smith; Lisa Sanditz, artist and Bard College teaching faculty; and Nicole Hayes, practicing ceramics teacher and graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. 

 

The Thomas Cole National Historic Site preserves and interprets the home, and studios of Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School of painting, the formative 19th-century art movement of the United States. Cole’s profound influence on America’s cultural landscape and the historic context of his work inspires us to engage broad audiences through innovative educational programs that are relevant today.

VIEW THE PRESS RELEASE

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

COURTNEY M. LEONARD

b. Shinnecock, 1980
lives and works in Northfield, Minnesota

More on Courtney M. Leonard

Courtney M . Leonard, "BREACH | Logbook 21 | CONVOKE | Abundance Basket and Contour", 2021, multi-ply birch wood and acrylic, coiled and woven earthenware, coiled micaceous clay, oyster shells, ~ 6 x 15 x 15" (basket), 2.5 x 40 x 48" (wood contour form), John Polak Photography.

FEATURING

“BREACH | Logbook 21 | CONVOKE”
2021
multi-ply birch wood and acrylic, coiled and woven earthenware, coiled micaceous clay, oyster shells
various dimensions
John Polak Photography

JACQUELINE BISHOP

JACQUELINE BISHOP

b. 1971, Kingston, Jamaica
lives and works in New York, NY

More on Jacqueline Bishop

FEATURING

“Fauna (Tea Service)”
2024
digital print on porcelain, gold lustre, Tea Set with Teapot, Cup, Saucer, Cream Pitcher, Sugar Pot, Rectangular Plate, Oval Plate; Teapot
various dimensions
John Polak Photography

PROGRAMMING

EXHIBITION OPENING
Free and open to the public. Saturday, May 3 | 4-6pm

Emily Cole Talk by Amanda Malmstrom, exhibition co-curator
Saturday, June 7

Artists’ Panel with Kate Menconeri (exhibition co-curator), Ann Agee, Francesca DiMattio, Valerie Hegarty, & Jacqueline Bishop
Saturday, September 20 | 2pm

CURATOR TOURS: “Emily Cole: Ceramics, Flora, and Contemporary Responses”

Friday, June 13, 2025
Friday, August 15, 2025
Friday, October 10, 2025

Tour Emily Cole: Ceramics, Flora, and Contemporary Responses” with the curators.

PRESS

Ann Agee, Valerie Hegarty and Francesca DiMattio were inspired to make new works, while Jacqueline Bishop, Courtney M. Leonard, Jiha Moon, Michelle Sound and Stephanie Syjuco made site-responsive installations. These are all in lively conversation throughout the house and studio with Emily Cole’s china wares (originally produced and exhibited in the same studio where her father once worked).

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Emily Cole, Daughter of Hudson River School Icon, Shines in Overdue Museum Show

The exhibition at Thomas Cole National Historic Site showcases her porcelain paintings alongside work by contemporary women artists.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

PUBLICATIONS

Emily Cole: Ceramics, Flora & Contemporary Responses

2025 | Published by Thomas Cole National Historic Site

This 60-page, full-color illustrated publication accompanies the 2025 special exhibition EMILY COLE: Ceramics, Flora & Contemporary Responses. The book is edited by curators Kate Menconeri and Amanda Malmstrom and is published by the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. It includes an in-depth essay on Emily Cole by Amanda Malmstrom; a critical essay on ceramics and women’s labor in the nineteenth century by Jenni Sorkin, and an essay and conversation with the contemporary artists by Kate Menconeri. Additionally, it features excerpts from Misty Cook’s Medicine Generations and special full-page color plates of individual artworks and site-responsive installations within the 19th century artist’s home and studio.

Published by the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, 60 pages, 8.5 x 11 inches.

PURCHASE THE CATALOG

19
Dec
2024
JACQUELINE BISHOP IN: Rise Up | Resistance, Revolution, Abolition

JACQUELINE BISHOP IN: Rise Up | Resistance, Revolution, Abolition

The Fitzwilliam Museum of Art

Trumpington Street
Cambridge
CB2 1RB

February 21, 2025 through June 1, 2025

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Discover the multifaceted history of the fight to end transatlantic slavery through the stories of the people, communities and anti-slavery movements who campaigned for abolition in the face of oppression and opposition.

Bringing together historic artworks and objects in conversation with works by contemporary artists, Rise Up explores the battle to abolish the British slave trade and end enslavement between 1750 and 1850, as well as the aftermath, its legacies and the ongoing struggle for equality and social justice today.

Focusing on the individuals whose contributions were vital to the British abolition story, our latest exhibition shines a light on the often-forgotten Black Georgians and Victorians, and commemorates the resistance leaders and revolutionaries across the Caribbean, Europe and the Americas; from Jamaican freedom fighter, Nanny of the Maroons to Nigerian-born, British-based writer and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano.

PROGRAMMING

Lunchtime Lecture | Meet the Artist: Jacqueline Bishop

Price: ÂŁ10
Date/time: Saturday, March 22, 2025 | 1–2pm
Location: Seminar Room

Join Jacqueline Bishop as she talks about her new work Nana (2024), currently on display in The Fitzwilliam Museum’s Rise Up exhibition. Bishop’s sculptural work celebrates the countless unrecorded Jamaican market women of West African heritage whose skills, knowledge and empowerment ‘exemplify resilience and agency’ and helped ‘shape the legacy of Caribbean and African heritage’.

NEWS & PUBLICATIONS

Work by Postgraduate Researcher Jacqueline Bishop on display at Fitzwilliam Museum and Royal Museums Greenwich | University of Leeds, 2025

“Jacqueline Bishop has, over time, consolidated an art practice that has questioned the basis of identity within the Atlantic world. Her work has looked to the barbarity of slavery, but placed it within the everyday and the quotidian, a set of plates, the use of ribbons and textiles. In her work, unexpected juxtapositions force a concentration on the often-hidden realities of the slave trade and the ways in which its normalisation took place in both Europe and the Caribbean.  Her PhD work has gone further in developing an understanding of the ways in which Jamaican identity is developed from of a patchwork of communities.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Rise Up – Exhibition catalogue

Published February 2025

Rise Up: Resistance, Revolution, Abolition, edited by Victoria Avery and Wanja Kimani

Catalogue to accompany the exhibition Rise Up: Resistance, Revolution, Abolition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, 21st February to 1st June 2025. The exhibition and catalogue explore the multifaceted history of the fight to end transatlantic slavery through the stories of the people, communities and anti-slavery movements who campaigned for abolition in the face of oppression and opposition. Rise Up explores the battle to abolish the British slave trade and end enslavement between 1750 and 1850, as well as the aftermath, its legacies and the ongoing struggle for equality and social justice today. It brings together historic artworks and objects with works by contemporary artists including  Errol Ross Brewster, François Cauvin, Kimathi Donkor and Joy Labinjo.

PURCHASE THE CATALOG

ABOUT JACQUELINE BISHOP

Jacqueline Bishop is an accomplished writer, academic, and visual artist with exhibitions in Belgium, Morocco, Italy, Cape Verde, Niger, USA, and Jamaica. In addition to her role as Clinical Full Professor at New York University, Jacqueline Bishop was a 2020 Dora Maar/Brown Foundation Fellow in France; 2008-2009 Fulbright Fellow in Morocco; and 2009-2010 UNESCO/Fulbright Fellow in Paris. Bishop has received several awards, including the OCM Bocas Award for her book “The Gymnast & Other Position”, The Canute A. Brodhurst Prize for short story writing, The Arthur Schomburg Award for Excellence in the Humanities from New York University, A James Michener Creative Writing Fellowship, as well as several awards from the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission. Jacqueline’s recent ceramic work consists of brightly colored bone China plates used symbolically in Caribbean homes and explores how they hid the violent legacy of slavery and colonialism in the Atlantic world.

02
Dec
2024
Sergei Isupov: EVERYTHING IS UPSIDE DOWN

Sergei Isupov: EVERYTHING IS UPSIDE DOWN

Everything is Upside Down
2024
repurposed maple tree, paint, wooden base

Permanent Public Art Sculpture by Sergei Isupov

On view at Ferrin Contemporary at Project Art, Cummington, MA 

Sergei Isupov, resident artist at Project Art in Cummington, MA, completed a carved wooden figural sculpture titled “Everything is Upside Down”. Over three weeks in Spring 2024, Isupov used power tools to shape the trunk of a sugar maple tree on Main Street, left behind after its top-half was cut down due to storm damage in the winter of 2024.

The Cummington Cultural District funded the artist’s proposal with an honorarium as part of the 2024 Arts Activation Project. As he worked, many members of the community watched and engaged with the artist in the progress. Once the carved figure was painted, and with help from other community members, Sergei moved the sculpture from its rooted base and installed it across the street at Project Art. It now faces Main Street, enjoyed by passers by and in dialogue with other public art along Main Street.

More on Project Art HERE

More on Sergei Isupov HERE

02
Dec
2024
Beth Lipman: ReGift at the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH

Beth Lipman: ReGift at the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH

Beth Lipman: ReGift

Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH

ongoing installation

ReGift is a sculptural installation created specifically for the Toledo Museum of Art. Originally on view in Gallery 18 in August 2023, the installation was moved to a permanent wing of the Museum.

Motivated by histories Lipman discovered in the archives at the TMA, the project features a three-quarter life-sized recreation of the parlor in Edward and Florence Libbey’s Old West End house. Using the Libbey’s bookplate as a visual guide (the only known image of their home interior) Lipman filled this architectural space with objects found in the image that she fabricated in transparent and opaque white glass.

Some of these original household objects, including furniture, were gifted to the Museum by Florence Scott Libbey upon her death in 1938 and later sold in the 1990s. Lipman’s project symbolically gifts these objects, along with their stories, to the entire Toledo community. By looking closely at an internal aspect of Florence’s life, the project aims to emphasize her deeply personal commitment to the Museum. It emphasizes her involvement in building the Museum’s legacy and, importantly, the impact of the Libbey’s on Toledo.

Glass elements for ReGift were made in the TMA’s hotshop at the Glass Pavilion during a 2022 GAPP residency. A glass press, donated to TMA by Libbey company was also utilized to create components, conceptually triangulating the founder’s business with the Museum and the Libbey’s personal life. Through the GAPP residency, the project fulfills an institutional goal to continue to promote experimentation in the glass studio, connecting past history to present creative practice.

For artist Beth Lipman, the project’s intent is to accentuate the impact of Toledo Museum of Art founders and reaffirm the Museum’s position as a catalyst within community. Lipman states, “Today, our trust in institutions has been undermined; ReGift is an opportunity to strengthen and reinvigorate the Museum’s critical role in our culture.”

A short film will accompany the installation. Commissioned for the project, filmmaker Atesh Atici found inspiration in Florence Scott Libbey’s approach to her community in the early days of the Toledo Museum of Art. Considering current polarization within our society and a growing separation from public spaces, Florence’s desire to, “encourage attendance on the part of all people irrespective of condition of life” is key to refocusing attention on the Museum’s ethos of creating a space for serving the community of Toledo and beyond. The film evokes Florence’s ideas through a dramatization of these ideas.

More on the Installation HERE

More on Beth Lipman HERE

In 2025, ReGift was moved to the Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Art Museum.

CATALOG

Beth Lipman: ReGift shares some of the unwritten histories that artist Beth Lipman discovered while conducting research in the archives of the Toledo Museum of Art. Her exploration inspired a room-sized recreation in wood, glass, and metal of a scene from a bookplate used by the museum’s founders, Edward Drummond Libbey and Florence Scott Libbey. Lipman was particularly keen to examine Florence’s life, and in conversation with curator Diane C. Wright and archivist Julie A. McMaster, she discusses the project’s origins in her own artistic practice and its relationship to shifting understandings of institutions and their publics. An essay by Wright and McMaster draws on additional archival materials to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge of Florence Scott Libbey’s life.

Published in conjunction with the exhibition Beth Lipman: ReGift, exclusively at the Toledo Museum of Art, August 12, 2023-September 1, 2024.

Written by Diane C. Wright, Senior Curator of Glass and Contemporary Craft, Toledo Museum of Art; featuring a conversation with Beth Lipman and contributions by Julie A. McMaster, Archivist, Toledo Museum of Art.

Softcover, 9 1/4″ x 6 3/4″
Published by the Toledo Museum of Art. Š 2023 Toledo Museum of Art

$19.95

PURCHASE THE CATALOG HERE

06
Nov
2024
CHRIS ANTEMANN: An Occasional Craving

CHRIS ANTEMANN: An Occasional Craving

Chris Antemann: An Occasional Craving

Dixon Gallery & Gardens
4339 Park Ave
Memphis, TN

February 9 – April 6, 2025

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

In 2011, American ceramic artist Chris Antemann formed what would become a fruitful partnership with the centuries-old Meissen porcelain manufactory that continues today. With a profound respect for the innovation and artistry of Meissen porcelain, Antemann re-envisions the concept of porcelain figural groupings with a wink of her twenty-first-century eye. Chris’ colorful, imaginative, and often cheeky ceramic sculptures parody the dynamics between men and women, much as they did in the eighteenth century. And while viewers of rococo porcelain figural groupings would have been cognizant of the coded innuendos that abound in the art of that era, Antemann is much more explicit in her representations (and parodies) of human sexuality.

Chris Antemann: An Occasional Craving presents a variety of Antemann’s works, from her early MEISSEN collaborations to more complex dramatic table-top centerpieces produced in her studio in Joseph, OR. Inspired by the Dixon’s own Warda Stevens Stout Collection of Eighteenth-Century German Porcelain, by the vitality of our beautiful gardens, and by the Berthe Morisot painting in our collection, Peasant Girl among Tulips, Antemann created a pair of tulipieres specifically for the Dixon Gallery and Gardens. Visitors to the exhibition will be charmed by her sculptures, which walk a fine line between lighthearted and profound, and come away with a deeper understanding of the nuances of historic German porcelain.

PAST PROGRAMMING

ACC at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Memphis, TN

The American Ceramic Circle traveled to Memphis on March 2-3, 2025 to explore the Dixon Gallery and Gardens collections and current exhibitions. The tour visited the studio of contemporary artist and University of Memphis professor, Kate Roberts, and the private home of renowned collectors of European porcelain.

At the Dixon, we went behind the scenes on guided tours of the museum and gardens with curators and horticulturists. We enjoyed a special tour with artist Chris Antemann and Julie Pierotti, curator of the solo exhibition, An Occasion to Gather, featuring a site-responsive commission, masterworks produced in her US studio, and selected vignettes produced during her 10-year collaboration with the Meissen Porcelain Manufactory in Germany.

Limited to 20.

ABOUT THE DIXON GALLERY & GARDENS

ABOUT THE DIXON’S COLLECTION

THIS EVENT HAS NOW PASSED

ABOUT CHRIS ANTEMANN

LEARN MORE ABOUT CHRIS ANTEMANN

American
b. 1970 Albany, NY
lives and works between Joseph, OR and Meissen, Germany

Chris Antemann is an American artist known for her frolicking, contemporary feminist parodies of 18th century porcelain figurines. For more than a decade, Antemann has worked collaboratively with the Meissen Porcelain Manufactory in Meissen, Germany to create increasingly ornate and elaborate variations on her lifelong love of the narrative, porcelain figurine. Recent years have seen a tremendous culmination of her time working with MEISSEN. Between 2015-2019, her large-scale installation Forbidden Fruit: Porcelain Sculptor Chris Antemann toured the US, Germany, and culminated at the State Hermitage Museum, Russia. In 2022, her largest, most complex sculpture to-date was unveiled at Hillwood Estate, Museum, & Gardens in Washington, DC; An Occasion to Gather reveals its sumptuous narrative across an eight-foot-long, four-foot-high dining room centerpiece. The relationship with MEISSEN continues and a decade of collaboration will be celebrated with an exhibition at the Meissen Porcelain Museum in Meissen, Germany from July 15, 2022 – February 26, 2023.

Antemann earned her MFA from the University of Minnesota and her BFA in Ceramics and Painting from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She has exhibited extensively in the United States, Europe, Russia, and Asia. Her work can be found in many private and public collections, including the Crocker Art Museum, High Museum of Art, Museum of Arts and Design, the Portland Art Museum, among many others. Her awards include the Virginia A. Groot first prize, and residencies with the Archie Bray Foundation, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology.

02
Nov
2024
COURTNEY M. LEONARD in: Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland

COURTNEY M. LEONARD in: Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland

Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland

The Block Museum of Art | Evanston, IL

January 25–July 13, 2025

Featuring Courtney M. Leonard

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Through the perspectives of four collaborating artists with connections to Zhegagoynak—Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe/European descent), Kelly Church (Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Tribe of Pottawatomi/Ottawa), Nora Moore Lloyd (Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe), and Jason Wesaw (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi) —Woven Being explores confluences that are continuing to shape Indigenous creative practices in the region and beyond.

The Chicagoland region is a longstanding cultural and economic hub for Indigenous peoples, including the Council of Three Fires— the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa—as well as the Menominee, Miami, Ho-Chunk, Sac, Fox, Kickapoo, and Illinois nations. People from many Indigenous nations call the region home today, and the city of Chicago has the third-largest urban Indigenous population in the United States.

Despite this rich history, Indigenous voices have often been excluded from Chicago’s art histories. This silence is harmful. Guided by Indigenous collaborations, priorities, and voices, the exhibition foregrounds the perspectives of Indigenous artists currently based in the city and those from nations forcibly displaced from the area in the nineteenth century.

Collaborating artists have partnered with The Block to create “constellations” of their own artwork and historical and contemporary artworks, primarily by Indigenous artists of the region. Overall Woven Being will present more than 80 works by 33 artists that speak to the diversity of Indigenous art, materials, and time, including several new and commissioned works and installations. Selections highlight themes we have identified in dialogue with diverse project advisors: kinship between materials, relations across regional landways and waterways,  and the weaving together of past, present, and future.

Seen together, the exhibition works form intimate and interwoven stories that resist monolithic storytelling. Instead of a comprehensive overview of regional art, Woven Being integrates four Indigenous perspectives of Chicagoland’s layered art histories. Such perspectives are central not only to understanding Chicago and its region, but also to understanding the widely interconnected Indigenous stories that have been, and continue to be, woven across the entirety of Turtle Island (North America).

VIEW THE PRESS RELEASE

ARTISTS IN THE EXHIBITION

• Josef Albers (American, born Germany)
• Rick Bartow (Mad River Band of Wiyot Indians)
• Frank Big Bear (White Earth Ojibwe)
• Roy Boney (Cherokee Nation)
• Andrea Carlson(Grand Portage Ojibwe/European descent)
• Avis Charley (Spirit Lake Dakota/Diné)
• Kelly Church (Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi/Ottawa)
• Woodrow Wilson Crumbo (Citizen Potawatomi)
• Nancy Fisher Cyrette (Grand Portage Ojibwe)
• Jim Denomie (Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe)
• Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Cherokee)
• Teri Greeves (Kiowa)
• Denise Lajimodiere (Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe)
• Mark LaRoque (White Earth Ojibwe)
• Courtney M. Leonard (Shinnecock Nation)
• Nora Moore Lloyd (Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe)

• Agnes Martin (American, born Canada)
• Wanesia Misquadace (Minnesota Lake Superior Chippewa Tribe Fond du Lac Band)
• George Morrison (Grand Portage Ojibwe)
• Barnett Newman (American)
• Daphne Odjig (Odawa/Potawatomi)
• Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti Pueblo)
• Chris Pappan (Kaw [Kanza]/Osage/Lakota)
• Cherish Parrish (Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi/Ottawa)
• John Pigeon (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi)
• Jason Quigno (Saginaw Chippewa)
• Monica Rickert-Bolter (Prairie Band Potawatomi/Black)
• Sharon Skolnick (Fort Sill Apache/Lakota)
• Rhiannon Skye Tafoya (Eastern Band Cherokee/Santa Clara Pueblo)
• Lisa Telford (Haida)
• Jason Wesaw (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi)
• Joe Yazzie (Navajo)
• Debra Yepa-Pappan (Jemez Pueblo/Korean)

EXHIBITION PUBLICATION

A 160-page multi-authored publication centers Indigenous voices and explores the exhibition’s expansive themes and questions. This book will be available midway through the exhibition run to document the installation and represent the constellations of artwork and thoughtful juxtapositions

Following an introduction by the exhibition’s co-curators, contributors Blaire Morseau (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi), Denise Lajimodiere (Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe), John Low (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi), and Anne Terry Straus and Jacqueline Lopez expand on the collaborating artists’ contributions from their own disciplinary and personal vantage points,   These chapters are interspersed with poetry and prose, including by Heid Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe), Mark LaRoque (White Earth Ojibwe), and Mark Turcotte (Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe), a resource guide focusing on Chicago’s Indigenous-led arts organizations, and installation views of the exhibition.

The Woven Being book is published by The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, produced by Marquand Books, Seattle , designed by OTAMI, Montreal, and distributed by the University of Washington Press (Forthcoming in Spring 2025.)

 

ORDER HERE

ABOUT COURTNEY M. LEONARD

Courtney Leonard Artist Portrait

Courtney M. Leonard is an artist and filmmaker, who has contributed to the Offshore Art movement. Leonard’s current work embodies the multiple definitions of “breach”, an exploration and documentation of historical ties to water, whale and material sustainability.

In collaboration with national and international museums, cultural institutions, and indigenous communities in North America, New Zealand, Nova Scotia, and the United States Embassies, Leonard’s practice investigates narratives of cultural viability as a reflection of environmental record.