Blog

The Everson Museum is proud to announce the acquisition of Polish artist Marek Cecula’s Scatology II on the occasion of World AIDS Day. It is difficult to overstate the importance that Cecula’s breakthrough series, which includes the Everson’s sculpture, had on the field of ceramics when it was created in 1992, close to the peak of the AIDS epidemic. In interviews, Cecula has always maintained that although AIDS was not an explicit component of the series, it was central to its creation—an unavoidable, looming presence in 1990s New York. Read More

Minor White (1908-1976) was an American photographer from Minneapolis who explored the ways in which photographs conveyed spiritual meaning. White received his first camera at age eight from his family, and photography quickly became a hobby. He attended the University of Minnesota (G’34) and minored in botany, literature, and pottery. Throughout college, White experimented with poetry as his main source of self-expression and stated that the “language of metaphor was natural to him.” In 1937, White transitioned from expressing himself with the written word of poetry to visual expression using photography, as he felt the change in medium could better express the spirituality of his poetry to audiences. Read More

Araki Takako (1921-2004) was born in Nishinomiya City, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. Eschewing traditions, she boldly chose a career in the arts over working in her family business. Araki began her art education in 1948 by studying Western-style painting with Kokuta Suda, a famous Japanese painter and calligrapher. She studied with Kokuta until 1951, and in 1960, traveled abroad to attend the Art Students League in New York City. She returned home to Japan in 1961, and began taking classes at the Kyoto Ceramic Research Institute. By 1963, Araki opened her own pottery in Nishinomiya. Read More

Jeff Donaldson (1932-2004) was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the youngest of three siblings. Intrigued by his brother’s interest in art, Donaldson began drawing cartoons and comic books when he was just three years old. As a teenager, Donaldson moved to Chicago where he took art courses at the Art Institute of Chicago. He eventually returned to Arkansas to attend AM&N College, where he studied art with John Miller Howard, a painter trained by Harlem Renaissance artist Hale Woodruff in the Social Realist style. Read More

Born into a wheat-farming family in La Crosse, Washington, Betty Whiteman Feves (1918-1985) became a prominent West Coast ceramist in the mid-twentieth century. In the late 1930s, she completed her undergraduate degree in art at Washington State College (now University), where she studied with up-and-coming Abstract Expressionist Clyfford Still. In the early 1940s, Feves attended the Art Students League in New York City and completed her master’s degree in Art Education at Columbia University. These few years spent in New York allowed Feves to experiment with clay structures and abstraction. Read More