2026 Perkins Lecture

The Alfred Ceramic Art Museum Announces the 21st Perkins Lecture of Ceramic History will take place on Thursday, April 2 at 4:30 p.m. in Nevins Theater in the Powell Campus Center with a small reception to follow.

Join artist Eugene Ofori Agyei and curator Larry Ossei-Mensah for an intimate conversation exploring artistic origins, material experimentation, and the evolving arc of Agyei’s exhibition Fihankra, currently on view at the museum. Together, they will reflect on journeys across continents, the realities of building a sustainable creative practice, and the role of clay—alongside fabric, wood, and found objects—as a site of play, resistance, and reimagination. From studio process to professional pathways, this dialogue offers a candid look at how ideas take form and how artists and curators shape meaning through material.

Larry Ossei-Mensah is a Ghanaian-American curator, cultural critic, and global advocate for contemporary art whose dynamic practice amplifies diverse voices and fosters cultural exchange across continents. He has organized exhibitions and projects in cities such as New York, London, Athens, São Paulo, Manila, Hong Kong, and Rome, collaborating with leading artists including Steve McQueen, Catherine Opie, Judy Chicago, Rashid Johnson, Melissa Joseph, and Chase Hall. He has also written about artists such as Genesis Tramaine, Antonio Obá, Tomashi Jackson, and Amoako Boafo.

Ossei-Mensah has served as Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) and Curator-at-Large at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). His curatorial impact extends to major institutions including the Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco), MASS MoCA, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Artpace San Antonio, MCA Denver, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Denver Art Museum.

A co-founder of ARTNOIR, a nonprofit supporting artists and curators of color, Ossei-Mensah continues to shape the field through ambitious projects such as The Poetics of Dimensions at ICA San Francisco, The Fabric of Being with Almeida & Dale in São Paulo, and Sonia Gomes: Abre Alas at Storm King Art Center. 

This year's lecture will be a conversation between Ossei-Mensah and current exhibiting artist at the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum Eugene Ofori-Agyei. 

Eugene Ofori Agyei was born in Ghana within an Akan ethnic community, but as a boy he moved into an Ewe community following his parents’ divorce. This move created in him from an early age a nascent sense of being an outsider. The feeling followed him when, as an adult, he moved to Togo. There the distinction between his earlier ethnic identities broke down, and he became simply “Ghanaian.” This mutation of identity went further still in 2020 when he moved to Florida for graduate school, as even the specificity of “Ghanaian” gave way to the simple blanket category of “African” (and the even more complicated notion of being “black”). He 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.

Agyei holds a degree in Industrial Art from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, and an MFA in Ceramics from the University of Florida. He has been awarded two NCECA fellowships, an Artaxis fellowship and the 2022 Pathways Carlos Malamud Prize. His sculptures have appeared in group exhibitions across the United States, at the American Museum of Ceramic Art, the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. Solo shows have taken him to the Rollins Museum of Art in Florida, North Dakota State University and Die Neue Sammlung (The Design Museum in Munich).

He is currently Assistant Professor of Art at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.