Exhibitions
Current Exhibitions
Alfred Ceramic Art Museum is delighted to announce the opening of “Autoethnography,” a solo exhibition by the groundbreaking artist Sharif Bey. The exhibition provides important examples from all of Bey’s central bodies of work – ranging from wheel-thrown vessels to intricate figurative sculptures, from gargantuan necklace forms to imposing ceramic shields – while highlighting in particular the transition between his functional pottery and figurative sculpture.
Eugene Ofori Agyei: Fihankra (You Did Not Say Goodbye When You Left Home)
Opening Reception: February 12, 5-7pm
February 12 - July 19, 2026
Eugene Ofori Agyei arrived at Alfred University in 2023, chosen by the Division of Ceramic Art faculty as the Turner Teaching Fellow in the School of Art & Design at the New York State College of Ceramics. Over the course of the following years, he formed a bond with the students, faculty and entire community, all the while developing his own unique practice.
Upcoming Exhibitions
Paula Murray: Resilience
September 10 - December 20, 2026
Opening Reception: September 10, 5 to 7 p.m.
Canadian artist Paula Murray’s work is unapologetically beautiful and unafraid to take on some of the most difficult and universal issues of the human experience: Breaking and healing, transformation, the search for truth of different kinds, and finding pathways towards reconciliation. In her own words:
"My practice is rooted in the relationship between process material and meaning. I am drawn to how ceramic materials and processes have affinities with the human condition; how we respond and engage with the injury of experience. By embracing wounds, deeper meaning can be brought to our lives, transforming suffering into something worthy, sensuous, and beautiful."
On display will be a survey from her decades-long practice, with an emphasis on the vessel as a metaphor for the human experience.
Opening Reception September 10, 5 to 7 p.m.
Italian sculptor Paolo Porelli’s latest installation is a wildly imaginative human menagerie of often bizarre, almost mythological figures. Playing with the Manichean idea that the universe is composed of both constructive and destructive forces, the figures are intended to suggest points on the scale between these poles, and thereby hint at the complex and precarious environmental predicament we find ourselves in today. Viewed through a different lens, his slip-cast creations can be read art-historically as post-modern mutations or re-imaginings of the Italian sculpture of antiquity. Porelli’s partner in both life and creativity is the art historian and archeologist Lori-Ann Touchette, who brings a deep knowledge of classical Greek and Roman art to the work that is clearly present. At another level still, they also can be seen as referencing the “figures” of pop-cultural playthings, the dolls and soldiers and science fiction heroes that so often exemplify a Manichean world view of good versus evil. Yet here the heroes and villains are not nearly so clear cut, and perhaps it is this suggestion of a playful imagination triumphing over mundane stereotypes that is the true creative energy behind these works.