Precedents: Past Meets Present... | Exhibitions

Precedents: Past Meets Present in Contemporary Glass and Clay

Racine Art Museum

Racine | Wisconsin | USA

Feb 09, 2022 - Sep 24, 2022

Artists gather influences from an almost endless variety of sources including cultural, social, and historical people, places, and ideas, as well as personal experiences and perspectives, and, last but not least, the work of other artists and other creatives. Whether or not an individual contemporary artist is directly inspired by an object or image from the past, it can be useful to compare and contrast recently made work with older similar examples. This kind of juxtaposition offers new contexts for understanding how motifs resurface regularly through generations, how much variety is possible within the dynamic of objects made in a certain material of relative size, and how artists might look at each other鈥檚 work for inspiration.

While RAM has an array of work in the collection, this particular exhibition was spurred by the recent acquisition of a number of nineteenth-century glass goblets and mid-twentieth-century ceramic vessels. A selection of contemporary goblets鈥攑art of a gift of more than 100 works from various artists鈥攚ill be paired with historic pieces. The goblets of Frtiz Dreisbach and James Minson, to name just two, reflect contemporary approaches that incorporate tradition yet also expand upon it. Small-scale ceramics including vases and bowls from early-twentieth-century producers鈥攕uch as Van Briggle Pottery and Weller Pottery鈥攁re paired with works from later in the century. These contemporary works include brilliantly-colored Feelies from Rose Cabat and a patterned vessel from Acoma Pueblo maker, Margaret Ascencio.