New York: Asia Week New York, in partnership with The Winter Show, is delighted to present Shaping Taste: Asian Ceramics and the Making of American Art & Design. The discussion will take place on Saturday, January 24th at 2:30pm in the Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, New York.
This panel brings together leading curators and historians of decorative arts from four American museums to explore the enduring impact of Asian ceramics on American art and design from the nineteenth century to the present. Panelists will discuss the early influence that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American collectors of Asian ceramics, such as Frank Brinkley and Charles Stewart Smith, had on Western understandings of the medium. They will also examine how classical Asian forms and surface ornament have resonated across American design in a wide range of media, from the studio pottery of Rookwood to the metalwork of Gorham and Tiffany.
The discussion then moves into the mid-twentieth century and beyond, tracing the dynamic, reciprocal exchanges between seminal ceramic artists in Japan and the United States—including figures such as Yagi Kazuo and Peter Voulkos—and the lasting ways in which American museum collections of Asian ceramics continue to inform contemporary artistic practice across Asia and the West.
About the Distinguished Experts:
Glenn Adamson is a curator, writer and historian based in New York and London. The author most recently of A Century of Tomorrows (Bloomsbury, 2024), he is currently Curator at Large for the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, Artistic Director for Design Doha – a biennial festival in Qatar – and editor of Material Intelligence, a quarterly online journal published by the Chipstone Foundation. Adamson’s previous publications include Thinking Through Craft (2007); The Craft Reader (2010); Postmodernism: Style and Subversion (2011, with Jane Pavitt); The Invention of Craft (2013); Art in the Making (2016, with Julia Bryan-Wilson); Fewer Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects (2018); Objects: USA (2020); and Craft: An American History (2021). Current curatorial projects include “Hella Jongerius: Whispering Things” for the Vitra Design Museum and “Keith Haring in 3D” for the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Ulysses Grant Dietz was Curator of Decorative Arts and Chief Curator at The Newark Museum for 37 years. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Yale in 1977, and his master of arts in American Material Culture from the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in 1980. The curator of 114 exhibitions during his tenure, Mr. Dietz is particularly proud of his work on The Newark Museum’s 1885 Ballantine House, which was re-interpreted and restored in 1994. His first ceramics exhibition was “The Newark Museum Collection of American Art Pottery of 1984.” A quarter-century later he produced “Masterpieces of Art Pottery, 1880-1930” for the museum’s centennial. In 1997, Mr. Dietz was the project director for “The Glitter & The Gold: Fashioning America’s Jewelry,” the first-ever exhibition and book on Newark’s once-vast jewelry industry. In 2003, Mr. Dietz published Great Pots: Contemporary Ceramics from Function to Fantasy, the first catalogue of the Museum’s studio pottery collection, which accompanied an exhibition of the same title. Additionally, Mr. Dietz has published numerous articles on decorative arts, as well as books on the Museum’s ceramics, 19th-century furniture, and jewelry collections.
Monika Bincsik is the Diane and Arthur Abbey Curator for Japanese Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She has organized numerous exhibitions for the museum, notably “Kimono Style: The John C. Weber Collection” (2022); “Kyoto: Capital of Artistic Imagination” (2019); “Japanese Bamboo Art: The Abbey Collection” (2017); and “Discovering Japanese Art: American Collectors and the Met” (2015). She has published extensively on Japanese decorative arts and collecting history, recently in Kimono Style: Edo Traditions to Modern Design (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2022) and The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2019).
Elizabeth A. Williams is the David and Peggy Rockefeller Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at RISD Museum. She joined the RISD Museum in 2013, following curatorial positions at LACMA and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the Kress Foundation Department of Art History at the University of Kansas, and an M.A. degree in Art History and a B.S. degree in Architectural Studies from the University of Missouri. At LACMA, she was the editor of and contributing author to Daily Pleasures: French Ceramics from the MaryLou Boone Collection, as well as the exhibition curator; and the curator and author of The Gilbert Collection at LACMA. At RISD, she co-curated “Arlene Shechet: Meissen Recast;” and curated “Beth Katleman’s Games of Chance,” “Paul Scott’s New American Scenery,” and “Gorham Silver: Designing Brilliance 1850-1970,” for which she served as editor of and primary contributing author to the accompanying publication. She recently curated a cross-cultural ceramics exhibition, entitled “Trading Earth: Ceramics, Commodities, and Commerce;” and curated “A Shared Journey: The Barkan Contemporary Ceramic Collection” at the RISD Museum, along with serving as the editor of and contributing author to the accompanying publication. Williams is the President of the American Ceramic Circle.
David L. Barquist is The H. Richard Dietrich, Jr., Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Art Museum, a position he has held since 2004. He received an A.B. in fine arts from Harvard College, an M.A. from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, and his Ph.D. in history of art from Yale University. From 1981-2004 he served as Assistant, Associate, and Acting Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery. His books include American Tables and Looking Glasses in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (1992) and Myer Myers: Jewish Silversmith in Colonial New York (2001), the subject of his dissertation and the catalogue for a traveling loan exhibition. He co-organized the 2008-2009 traveling exhibition “Setting the President’s Table: American Presidential China from The Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Collection” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Currently he is co-curating the exhibition “Workshop of the World: Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia,” opening in July 2026 at the Philadelphia Art Museum. He is also working on completing the catalogue of the Museum’s American silver collection; the first volume was published in 2018, and volume two will be forthcoming in 2027.
Joan B. Mirviss has been a renowned expert in Japanese art, specializing in prints, paintings, screens and most especially contemporary ceramics for more than forty years. She is the leading Western dealer in the field of modern and contemporary Japanese ceramics, and her New York gallery exclusively represents the top Japanese clay artists. She is the co-founder of Asia Week New York and served as its first Chairperson. In addition to authoring numerous publications, since April of 2020, she has moderated thirty panels on a wide variety of Asian art topics that may be found on her gallery’s website. Since 1981, she has been an annual exhibitor at The Winter Show.
For ticket information, visit asiaweekny.com or www.thewintershow.org
About Asia Week New York
Asia Week New York has grown from a nine-day spring celebration into a year-round platform that keeps Asian art in the spotlight for a global audience. It brings together top-tier international Asian art galleries, the six major auction houses, and numerous museums and Asian cultural institutions, featuring simultaneous gallery open houses, auctions, museum exhibitions, lectures, and special events. Participants from Great Britain, China, Hong Kong, Japan, and the United States unveil an extraordinary array of museum-quality treasures from China, India, the Himalayas, Southeast Asia, Tibet, Nepal, Japan, and Korea. Asia Week New York Association, Inc. is a 501(c)(6) non-profit trade membership organization registered with the state of New York.
About The Winter Show
The Winter Show, an annual benefit for the East Side House Settlement, is the leading art, antiques, and design fair in America, featuring more than 70 of the world’s leading experts in the fine and decorative arts. Held at the historic Park Avenue Armory in New York City, in January, the fair highlights a dynamic mix of works dating from ancient times through the present day and maintains the highest standards of quality in the art market. Each object at the fair is vetted for authenticity, date, and condition by a committee of 120 experts from the United States and Europe.
All the revenues from the fair’s general admission and the net proceeds from the Opening Night and other special events support East Side House and contribute substantially to its private philanthropic budget. No part of sales made by exhibitors is received by East Side House.
About East Side House
East Side House Settlement is a community-based organization located in the South Bronx. Recognizing education as the key to economic and civic opportunity, East Side House works with schools, community centers, and other partners to bring quality education and resources to individuals in need, helping approximately 14,000 residents of the Bronx and Northern Manhattan improve their lives each year. For more information, please visit: https://www.eastsidehouse.org
Captions (top to bottom):
Made by Rookwood Pottery, Cincinnati, Ohio, 188 -1960. Decorated by Kitaro Shirayamadani (1865 – 1948), Vase, 1899, stoneware with “Black Iris” glaze, 17 3/8 x 11 1/2 inches (44.1 x 29.2 cm). Philadelphia Art Museum, Gift of John T. Morris, 1901-15
Gorham Manufacturing Company, American (1831-present), Tureen, 1884, silver, 6 11/16 x 10 7/8 x 8 1/8 inches (17 x 27.7 x 20.7 cm ) (overall). Gift of Mrs. Pierre Brunschwig, 81.072ab
Kutani Teapot, late 1800s, Japanese, stoneware with glaze and overglaze enamels 6 inches (15.2 cm) (height). Bequest of Isaac C. Bates, 13.143