Animalia

This exhibition highlights some of the animal representations in the museum’s permanent collection: owls, snakes, birds, elephant, dogs and a tapir, to name a few. The artists include Alanna DeRocchi, Bruce Gholson, David Weinrib, Linda Cordell, Matthew Metz, Akio Takamori, Peter Morgan, Beth Low, Shoko Teruyama, Kurt Weiser, and Jenny Lind.

Some of the animals are in low relief, cleverly growing from a vessel, and one animal’s head becomes the finial of a lid. There are examples of animal images utilizing the sgraffito technique on the sides of vessels from the 14th and 21st centuries and others with two-dimensional rendering in slip or glaze. A Peruvian zoomorphic pot made more than 1,000 years ago will share the gallery with an object representing the same animal, but produced last year - reminding us again of the long history of clay’s interaction with the life forms on earth.