The Renwick Gallery is a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum located in Washington, D.C. that displays American craft and decorative arts from the 19th to 21st century. The gallery is housed in a National Historic Landmark building that was opened in 1859 on Pennsylvania Avenue and originally housed the Corcoran Gallery of Art. When it was built in 1859, it was called "the American Louvre", and is now named for its architect James Renwick, Jr.
American craft is craft work produced by independent studio artists working with traditional craft materials and processes. Examples include wood, glass, clay (ceramics), textiles, and metal (metalworking). Studio craft works tend to either serve or allude to a functional or utilitarian purpose, although they are just as often handled and exhibited in ways similar to visual art objects.
D. Wayne Higby is an American artist working in ceramics. The American Craft Museum considers him a "visionary of the American Crafts Movement" and recognized him as one of seven artists who are "genuine living legends representing the best of American artists in their chosen medium."
Adrian Saxe is an American ceramic artist who was born in Glendale, California in 1943. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Frans Wildenhain also known as Franz Rudolf Wildenhain was a Bauhaus-trained German potter and sculptor, who taught for many years at the School for American Craftsmen at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.
Harrison Edward McIntosh was an American ceramic artist. He was an exponent of the Mid-century Modern style of ceramics, featuring simple symmetrical forms. His work has been exhibited in venues in the United States including the Smithsonian and internationally including at the Louvre in France.
Kenneth Richard Ferguson was an American ceramist.
Lauren Kalman is a contemporary American visual artist who uses photography, sculpture, jewelry, craft objects, performance, and installation. Kalman's works investigate ideas of beauty, body image, and consumer culture. Kalman has taught at institutions including Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Currently she is an associate professor at Wayne State University.
Susan Hale Kemenyffy is an American artist who works primarily in drawing and print media. She is known for the innovative raku art she created in collaboration with her husband Steven Kemenyffy.
Jennifer Trask is an American artist. She received a BFA in Metalsmithing from the Massachusetts College of Art, and an MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz.
Chris Gustin is an American ceramicist. Gustin models his work on the human form, which is shown through the shape, color, and size of the pieces.
Richard A. Hirsch is an American abstract ceramic sculptor. He received a BS in art education from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 1956, an MFA in ceramics from the Rochester Institute of Technology's School for American Craftsmen in 1971 and an honorary Ph.D. from National Taiwan University of Arts in 2008. He taught at Nazareth College, Sault College, Boston University and at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he currently holds the title of professor emeritus, College of Art and Design.
Paula Colton Winokur (1936–2018) was an American artist. She was one of the leading ceramic artists in the United States from the 1970s until her death in 2018.
Ron Meyers is an American studio potter and ceramics teacher known for producing functional pottery featuring animal and human forms. His work is featured in numerous museums and notable collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Georgia Museum of Art, and the Rosenfield Collection, and he has presented more than 100 workshops in the US and internationally. He has been described as "one of his generation's most important potters" and "an icon of the American ceramics community."
Michael Sherrill is an American ceramist and sculptor. Primarily self-taught, Sherrill's early work in the 1970s and 1980s focused on creating functional pieces in clay before turning to sculptural artwork in porcelain and metal in the 1990s. Sherrill lives and works in Bat Cave, North Carolina.
Michael John Simon was an American ceramic artist. He is known primarily for his salt-fired stoneware works combining distinct forms with wax-resist animal or natural motifs.
Anne Currier is an American ceramist. She was born in Louisville, Kentucky, but she now resides in Scio, NY. Currier is known for her abstract ceramic works, which play with positive and negative space. Many of her works resemble the human form and architectural elements. In an artist statement, Currier revealed that her work was inspired by Greek and Buddhist sculpture. Currier also expressed that the play with visual planes, as found in the Cubist movement, was an inspiration.
Susanne Stephenson is an American sculptor and ceramics artist.
Wanxin Zhang is a Chinese-American sculptor based in San Francisco, known for his large-scale ceramic figures, formless ceramic structures, and bronze pieces. He is recognized as one of the leading artists in the new generation of the Bay Area clay movement. Zhang's work is characterized by a fusion of California Funk influence and references to Chinese history. His monumental clay figures convey themes of globalization, politics, and power by reshaping traditional symbols with contemporary pop culture elements. Zhang's work is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum Collections.
Syd Carpenter is an African American artist and a retired professor of studio art, known for her ceramic and sculpture work, which explores African-American farming and gardening. She has received multiple fellowships, including a Pew Fellowship and an NEA Fellowship, and her work is currently in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art's collection.
