Meghen Jones, Guest Curator and Associate Professor of Art History, Alfred University
What is a teabowl? How did it become an iconic ceramic art form? A millennium ago in China, Buddhist monks drank green tea from bowls with brown and black glazes. Later, in Korea and Japan, potters crafted teabowls of increasingly diverse designs, often intentionally asymmetrical. Treasured teabowls, if broken, were repaired with lacquer and gold. Ritual etiquette dictated the ways in which teabowls have been used to prepare and serve tea in East Asia. Today, around the world, people invent personal tea ceremonies. Contemporary artists create teabowls with a range of motivations, from channeling the classics to breaking new ground in forms and processes. Tracing the teabowl's path in Asia and beyond, this exhibition features over one hundred teabowls and related objects from the tenth through the twenty-first century.
Path of the Teabowl includes works from the permanent collection of the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum as well as important loans from the collections of Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz, Marlin and Ginger Miller, Linda Sikora, the Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, Massachusetts, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, and the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Funding for the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum's Path of the Teabowl project, which includes the exhibition, a forthcoming catalogue, and an online international conference, has been provided by the Museum's Schein-Joseph Exhibition Fund and the Robert C. Turner Endowment Fund, with additional support from the Levine Endowment, created by Steve, AU' 61, and Michiko Levine to encourage and support the interaction of Alfred University and Asian cultures; the New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University School of Art Design; and a grant from the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies, in conjunction with the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission.
Guest curated by Meghen Jones, Associate Professor of Art History, Alfred University
Pondered Resource: on loan from the personal collections of Currier, Andrea and John Gill, Wayne Higby, Walter McConnell, and Linda Sikora
Guest Curated by John Gill
May 26 - November 12, 2004
Glass Art Reflects the Future: From the Collections of the Paul Vickers Gardner Glass Center
Guest curated by Margaret Rasmussen
March 14 - April 21, 2002
