Museum Exhibition

Toshiko Takaezu: Dialogues in Clay

Oblong sphere-shaped ceramic vessel with small neck and opening at top.

Toshiko Takaezu, Sunrise Egg, ca. 2003–04, refired 2006. Princeton University Art Museum. Gift of the artist. © Toshiko Takaezu

Princeton University Art Museum

Princeton, NJ 08544
USA

Toshiko Takaezu: Dialogues in Clay presents the work of the groundbreaking ceramic artist Toshiko Takaezu (1922–2011), who taught at Princeton University for almost three decades.

Drawing from the Museum’s deep holdings of Takaezu’s ceramics, Dialogues in Clay explores the artist’s experimental practice, including her signature “closed” forms and painterly glazing. Placing Takaezu’s sculptures in conversation with the work of her teachers and contemporaries who embarked on parallel pathways of innovation—including Helen Frankenthaler, Maija Grotell, Robert Motherwell, Isamu Noguchi, Lenore Tawney, and Peter Voulkos,— alongside reflections by her students, the exhibition positions Takaezu as one of the most important ceramic artists of the twentieth century.

Inaugural Exhibition Explores the Legacy of Toshiko Takaezu

Curated by

Juliana Ochs Dweck ,

Chief Curator

,

Princeton University Art Museum

Samuel Shapiro ,

PhD Candidate, Department of Art & Archaeology

,

Princeton University

Organization credit

Toshiko Takaezu: Dialogues in Clay is made possible by The Judith and Anthony B. Evnin, Class of 1962, Exhibition Fund; The Kathleen C. Sherrerd Program Fund for American Art; and The Melanie and John Clarke Exhibition Fund.

Exhibitions at the Princeton University Art Museum are made possible by the following contributors to the Director’s Exhibition Fund: Allen R. Adler and Frances Beatty Adler, Len and Laura Berlik, John L. Cecil and Celia A. Felsher, Jeannie and Jitender Chopra, John and Susan Diekman, William S. Fisher and Sakurako D. Fisher, Stacey Roth Goergen and Robert Goergen, Preston H. Haskell III, Robert and Lynn Johnston, David and Catherine Loevner, Shelly and Tony Malkin, Edward E. Matthews, Dean and Jill Mitchell, Christopher E. Olofson, Anne C. Sherrerd, Preeti and Sanjay Swani, Theodora D. and William H. Walton III.

Additional support has been provided by Tena and Chris Achen, Sarah Lee Elson, Christopher C. and Astrid Forbes, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Paul G. Haaga Jr. and Heather Sturt Haaga, Padmaja Kumari Parmar and Kush M. Parmar, Mark W. Stevens and Annalyn Martha Swan, Judy and Ed Stier, Jonathan Lee Walton.