About

Glenn Adamson. Currently the director of The Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Formerly Head of Research Victoria and Albert Museum, tutor at the Royal College of Art, co-editor of the tri-annual Journal of Modern Craft, and author of Thinking Through Craft (Berg Publishers/V&A), editor of an anthology The Craft Reader (Berg, 2010), and “The Invention of Craft” (Berg, 2012). Co-curated (with Jane Pavitt) Postmodernism: Style and Subversion, 1970–1990, for the the V&A in 2012.

Dawn Bennett. Former executive director of UrbanGlass in Brooklyn, NY, for over ten years. Previously, development officer at the American Craft Museum, NY, and associate editor of American Ceramics magazine. In 2001, with co-organizers Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio, received the Ceramic Lifetime Achievement of the Year Award from The Friends of Contemporary Ceramics for her role as an organizing director of CAF’s 1999 Ceramic Millennium conference which took place in Amsterdam.

Marek Cecula. Founder Modus Design, former head and coordinator of the ceramics department at Parsons School of Design, New York (1983–2004). Founded the Design Centrum in Kielce, Poland where he lives. Curator of the 3rd International Festival of Design in Lodz, Poland — Contemporary Ceramic Section, 2009 and 2010.

Louise Cort. Curator of Ceramics at The Sakler and Freer Museums of Art, Washington DC. Author of Shigaraki, Potters’ Valley (1979, reprinted in 2000), A Basketmaker in Rural Japan (co-authored with Nakamura Kenji, 1995), Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics: A Close Embrace of the Earth (2003] and curator of the accompanying traveling exhibition. Her latest book is Temple Potters of Puri (2003) with Purna Chandra Mishra.

Ned Cramer. Editor-in-chief of Architect, editorial director of Architectural Lighting, Eco-Structure and Metalmag published by Hanley Wood, Washington, D.C. Was first full-time curator of the Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF), where he organized exhibitions such as A Century of Progress: Chicago’s 1933-34 World’s Fair and New Federal Architecture: Face of a Nation.

Ulysses Dietz. Chief Curator of the Newark Museum and currently acting director. He has written extensively on ceramics including the book Great Pots: Contemporary Ceramics from Function to Fantasy (2004). Newark was the first museum in the US to actively collect 20th century ceramics beginning with its 1912 exhibition, Modern Pottery.

Andrew Glasgow. Former director of American Crafts Council, Furniture Society, and director of education and collections at the Southern Highland Craft Guild. The Andrew Glasgow Writer’s Residency, a new Penland program, was established in 2010.

John Stuart Gordon. Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts, Yale University Art Gallery. His publications and exhibitions include A Modern World: American Design from the Yale University Art Gallery, 1920–1950 (2011) and The Architect’s Table: Swid Powell and Postmodern Design (2007).

Paul Greenhalgh. Director Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich. Formerly he was director of research for the Victoria and Albert Museum and director of the Corcoran Museum in Washington DC. Author of numerous books including, Art Nouveau 1890-1940, The Modern Ideal: The Rise and Collapse of Idealism in the Visual Arts, Modernism in Design and The Persistence of Craft.

Pamela Hootkin. Until recently, Hootkin was Senior Vice President, Treasurer and Director of Investor Relations at PVH Corp., global retail and apparel company.  She is also Vice Chair of the Board of Safe Horizon, a not-for-profit based in New York City as well as a Board member of Cedar Realty Trust (NYSE).  With her husband Stephen, they are leading collectors of contemporary ceramics.

Rob Hunter. Editor of the annual journal, Ceramics in America, published by the Chipstone Foundation. Has written extensively and received the 2007 Award of Merit for the Society for Historical Archeology and is a fellow of The Society of Antiquaries, London.

Garth Johnson. Studio artist, writer, curator and educator who until recently lived in Eureka, California and taught at The College of the Redwoods has been appointed Curator of Artistic Program for the Clay Studio, Philadelphia. He is a craft activist who explores craft’s influence and relevance in the 21st century. His weblog, Extreme Craft is a “Compendium of Art Masquerading as Craft, Craft Masquerading as Art, and Craft Extending its Middle Finger.” His first book, 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse was published by Quarry in November, 2009. He has also contributed to the books Handmade Nation, Craftivity, Craft Corps and World of Geekcraft. His work has been exhibited internationally.

Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl. Co-founder of SuperFormLab at School of Design, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art, and of the collaborative, Copenhagen Ceramics, Exhibition Space. He is an active exhibiting artist and curator.

Tony Marsh. Professor of Art and Head of the ceramics department, California State University, Long Beach. With Patti Marcus he organized the four day film festival for the Ceramic Millennium 1999 and has since maintained a film archive on ceramics at CSULB.

David Queensberry. The 12th Marquis of Queensberry, David became Professor of Ceramics at the Royal College of Art, London transforming a lackluster department into a vital art international facility that launched postmodern ceramics in Britain. An associate since 1966 of the prestigious Queensberry Hunt Design Group working with major ceramic factories worldwide. The work of his Design Group was recently the subject of an exhibition at the V&A.

Anders Ruhwald. Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Professor of ceramics at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills MI., and an active exhibiting sculptor.

Ezra Shales. Associate Professor Massachusetts College of Art, Previously Associate Professor of Art Alfred University. Author of numerous articles and papers and the book, Made in Newark: Cultivating Industrial Arts and Municipal Identity in the Progressive Era, 2010.

Martin Smith. Department head and Professor of Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art, London and a widely exhibiting artist.

Cindi Strauss. Assistant Director of Programming, curator of Modern and Contemporary Decorative Arts and Design, Museum of Fine Art-Houston. She is the editor and author of numerous books including Shifting Paradigms in Contemporary Ceramic Art (2012) and Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection (2007).

Jorunn Veiteberg. Adjunct professor Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norway and guest professor School of Design and Crafts Gothenburg University, Sweden. Author of numerous books including Craft in Transition (2005).

Garth Clark is the Editor-in-Chief for CFile’s publishing projects, journal and news magazine. Irving Blum, the pioneering contemporary art dealer who launched Andy Warhol, Ken Price and Andrew Lord’s careers calls Clark “ceramics’ great clarifier.” The Mather Award jury of the College Art Association (Clark was the 2005 award winner) wrote that his writings “have shaped thought about the field of ceramics and indeed the field itself.” A hydra-headed force in the field, Clark has received many honors; Fellow of the Royal College of Art, London, several honorary doctorates and lifetime achievement awards, the “Art Book of the Year” award from Art Libraries Society of North America, medals from the Independent Publishers Association and others. He is author of over sixty books and several hundred reviews and essays.

With Mark Del Vecchio in 1981 he founded Garth Clark Gallery in New York, Los Angeles and briefly London and Kansas City. He founded the Ceramic Arts Foundation in 1979 and was its Director until 2005. An active speaker, Clark has spoken on five continents in thirty countries at over 100 major venues from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London to the Sorbonne University, Paris. Next year he will be in Europe on a lecture tour taking him to Ireland, Britain, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, France and Italy as CFile’s ambassador. He has just completed two books, Mind Mud: The Conceptual Ceramics of Ai Weiwei and Lucio Fontana Ceramics.