Podcast | Red Clay Rambler––Louise Cort

We periodically feature the work of fellow ceramics journalist Ben Carter, who hosts the Tales of the Red Clay Rambler podcast.

In this episode, Carter speaks with Louise Cort about her experience as the Curator for Ceramics at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution.

After traveling to Japan on an exchange program in high school, Louise developed a love for everyday functional objects. This fascination led her to a PHD in ceramic history from Oxford and then onto nearly fifty years of research and curatorial work in museums. Forty of those years was spent working for the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer and Sackler Galleries where she was the curator of ceramics.

In our interview we talk about what constitutes good museum display. She mentioned a favorite exhibition during her time at the Freer Gallery when Australian ceramicist Gwyn Hanssen Pigott was invited to assemble groupings of work from the gallery’s permanent collection. She choose pots based on formal relationships regardless of nationality or time period. The above image is an example of one of Pigott’s groupings. We also discuss her research into Japanese and Southeast Asian ceramics and how museums are evolving as cultural awareness shifts.

Explore Cort’s research, here.