Blog

Fifty-one years ago, on October 27, 1968, the Everson Museum of Art officially opened to the public after two and a half years of construction and three back-to-back days of special events. Opening weekend began on October 25 with a building dedication dinner and celebration of the Museum’s inaugural exhibitions. Guests explored the exhibitions Selections from the Collection of Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, Artists of New York State, and Traditional American Painting, before sitting down to dinner in the lower level gallery that today is dedicated to the display of ceramics. Read More

Steven Young Lee (b. 1975) grew up in Chicago, Illinois, and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and his Master of Fine Arts in ceramics from Alfred University in Alfred, New York. Today Lee is the Resident Artistic Director of the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana, a position he has held since 2006. Read More

Adelaide Alsop Robineau, today considered one of America’s preeminent studio potters, began her ceramics career as a china painter, painting designs on porcelain blanks produced by other craftsmen. After moving to Syracuse with her husband in 1901, Robineau started experimenting with making her own porcelain forms and quickly became a master of the medium, known for decorative techniques that included intricate excising and carving away of clay. Read More

Ceramist Richard Shaw (b. 1941) began working with clay in the 1960s at the San Francisco Art Institute. Shaw’s parents were both artists, his mother a painter and his father an animator at Walt Disney. Although he admired his father’s career from a young age, Shaw set out to be a “serious” artist. In an interview with Richard Wittaker, Shaw explained that he believed “‘real art’ was being a painter, not being an animator, a cartoonist or any of that stuff.” This statement is amusing today, as Shaw’s trompe l’oeil sculptures—the work he is best known for—are not often immediately recognizable as artworks. Read More