Precedents: Past Meets Present in Contemporary Glass and Clay

February 9 – September 24, 2022
at Racine Art Museum

George Edgar Ohr
Doubled Handled Vase, ca. 1900
Glazed earthenware
4 1/2 x 3 inches diameter
Racine Art Museum, Gift of Devra Miller Breslow
Photography: Jon Bolton

Artists gather influences from an almost endless variety of sources including cultural, social, and historical people, places, and ideas, as well as personal experiences and perspectives, and, last but not least, the work of other artists and other creatives. Whether or not an individual contemporary artist is directly inspired by an object or image from the past, it can be useful to compare and contrast recently made work with older similar examples. This kind of juxtaposition offers new contexts for understanding how motifs resurface regularly through generations, how much variety is possible within the dynamic of objects made in a certain material of relative size, and how artists might look at each other’s work for inspiration.

While RAM has an array of work in the collection, this particular exhibition was spurred by the recent acquisition of a number of nineteenth-century glass goblets and mid-twentieth-century ceramic vessels. A selection of contemporary goblets—part of a gift of more than 100 works from various artists—will be paired with historic pieces. The goblets of Frtiz Dreisbach and James Minson, to name just two, reflect contemporary approaches that incorporate tradition yet also expand upon it. Small-scale ceramics including vases and bowls from early-twentieth-century producers—such as Van Briggle Pottery and Weller Pottery—are paired with works from later in the century. These contemporary works include brilliantly-colored Feelies from Rose Cabat and a patterned vessel from Acoma Pueblo maker, Margaret Ascencio.

More About the Exhibition

Exhibition Notes (PDF)

Press Room

Artists in the Exhibition

Nancy Y. Adams, Margaret Ascencio, Suzan Benzle and Donavon Boutz, Rose Cabat, Nik Christensen and Sean Bradley, Tom and Elaine Coleman, Brad Copping, R. Corrie and Union Street Glass, Edward Richard Cromey, Roseline Delisle, Fritz Dreisbach, Kishi Eiko, Tracy Glover, Peter Greenwood, Theophil Hansen, Ola Höglund, R. Jason Howard, Margaret Ponce Israel, Bennett Jordan and Karen Gilbert, Karen Karnes, Cliff Lee, Peter Lenzo, Eileen Lewenstein, Harvey K. Littleton, James Lovera, Phillip Maberry, Warren MacKenzie, Dante Marioni, Richard Marquis, Maria Martinez, Elizabeth Ryland Mears, Mettlach Factory, James Minson, Ludwig Moser & Sons, Margaret Neher, George Edgar Ohr, Kayo O’Young, Joseph Pagano, Elio Quarisa, Rito Talavera Quezada, Roseville Pottery, Harvey Sadow, Herbert Sanders, Charles Savoie, Stephen Smyers, Robert W. Stephan, Randy Strong, Boyd Sugiki, Natalie Surving, Akio Takamori, Tiffany & Co., Cesare Toffolo, Van Briggle Pottery, Weller Pottery, William Wilhelmi, Jade Snow Wong, Beatrice Wood, and Irina Zaytceva