Last Chance to See Great Ceramics January 24, 2009

Saturday, January 24th marks the end of the Las Cruces Museum of Art’s current exhibit, “Innovation and Change: Great Ceramics from the Ceramics Research Center, Arizona State University Art Museum Collection.” Don’t miss your chance to see over seventy masterworks by many of the leading international artists of our time. The exhibit offers a panoramic survey of the potential of clay as an expressive art form.

Art on display includes functional ware, such as work by British potter Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada - a forerunner in the Japanese folk art movement, and Pueblo artists Nampeyo and Maria Martinez. Sculptural ceramics are also represented, including pieces by figurative artist Stephen DeStaebler and Robert Arneson - father of the ceramic Funk movement. Influenced by European modernist design, as well as Asian pottery traditions, these ceramic pioneers created a new American aesthetic.

The showing here in Las Cruces is part of a ten city national tour over a three year period. The exhibition was curated by Peter Held, Curator of Ceramics and was developed and managed by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services, as exhibition tour development company in Kansas City, Missouri.

All exhibits and receptions at the Museum of Art, located at 491 N. Main St. in the downtown mall, are accessible and free to the public. For more information about exhibits and Studio Programs art classes, please call 575-541-2137 or visit the website http://museums.las-cruces.org