Museum Studios and Galleries // Registration Required

Visual images, like language, carry meaning, and the ability to read images is a useful skill in an increasingly visual world. In this workshop, teachers examine ways to develop student thinking and writing skills using a four-part art criticism process and/or a guided pre-writing approach. Participants learn ways to encourage thinking and motivate student writing using careful observation of a visual artwork as the starting point. Sharing ideas and ways to connect artwork to curriculum themes is part of the workshop.

Click here to read more about the instructor, Sandra Phaup, and the workshop series! Register now! 

GALLERY  TALK // Face Jugs

DRAWING CLASS // Drop-in and Draw

FILM // Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives

Click here to learn more about First Thursdays! 

$75 ($60 for members) includes supplies // Adults and teens 15 and up
Instructor: Chad Nelson of Nelson Studios, creator of UGCHUGS, whimsical and functional pottery!

Inspired by the exhibition, Face Jugs: Art and Ritual in 19th-Century South Carolina, students will create their own Face Jugs. Students will construct a vessel out of slabs of clay, resulting in a blank canvas upon which they will sculpt a face. They will experience the benefits and limitations of using clay as a sculptural medium and will also learn about different types of clay, the firing process, and various ceramic finishes. 

Must attend January 19 and February 9 classes to participate. Click here to register! 

FREE

Our newest gallery, The Dick Jemison Collection of African Ceramics, will open to the public on February 22, in conjunction with our 1st Bunting Biennial Ceramics Symposium! Come explore pieces from the largest African Ceramics collection in the country! 

Steiner Auditorium
FREE and open to the public 

The Museum is pleased to present The Friend Lecture by Magdalene Odundo as the keynote speaker for the Bunting Biennial Ceramics Symposium.

Odundo is an internationally acclaimed ceramic artist whose hand built vessels have become the fulcrum of a world of pottery traditions. Born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1950, Odundo is presently professor of ceramics at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design University College in Farnham, UK.

Odundo’s thin-walled vessels embody a far flung ceramic history that ranges from her native Kenya to Greco-Roman antiquity. Blending an exceptionally large list of “ancient and contemporary ‘heroes,’ ” Odundo’s symmetrical and biomorphic pots reflect her own unique relationship with clay, fire, and form.

As she explains, “Clay is a simple substance with a complex structure playing havoc without and within our kilns, keeping us guessing and daring to change its natural composition. Yet, like an alchemist seeking to make gold, I continue to seek to create that ultimate elusive simple vessel which will hold magic for me.”

Odundo’s vessels suggest both animated and vocal beings rooted equally in cross-cultural techniques and forms and in modern and postmodern sculptural sensibilities. Beyond their aesthetic resonance with multiple artistic traditions, her work reflects a unique insight into the transcultural roles and meanings of ceramic vessels, both sacred and secular. Odundo’s work can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the British Museum, the Detroit Institute of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Victoria and Albert Museum. and the Birmingham Museum of Art among others.

The talk will be followed by a public reception.

For complete information about the Symposium and the schedule, please CLICK HERE.

FREE and open to the public

Ceramics of all periods and cultures share a relationship with the human body. Whether utilitarian, ritualistic, decorative, or artistic in function, all ceramics interface with the human body in their design, manufacture, decoration, or use.  Indeed, the very nomenclature used to describe a ceramic pot – the lip, mouth, neck, shoulder, belly, and foot – is derived from the human form.  The symposium, organized in conjunction with the 28th Annual Alabama Clay Conference, will explore the relationship between ceramics and the human body by considering the subject in a broad array of historical and geographical contexts.

Speakers at the Symposium will be:

Keynote:  Magdalene Odundo, ceramic artist

Garth Clark, historian, critic, gallery owner, collector

Bonnie Kemske, ceramic artist, editor of Ceramic Review magazine

Jeannine O’Grody, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Birmingham Museum of Art

Emily Hanna, Curator of the Arts of Africa and the Americas, Birmingham Museum of Art

Julie Pierotti, Associate Curator, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis

Meghan Tierney, Ph.D. candidate, Emory University, Atlanta

SATURDAY SCHEDULE:

9am    Opening Remarks, Anne Forschler-Tarrasch, Ph.D., The Marguerite Jones Harbert and John M. Harbert III Curator of Decorative Arts

9:15am        Bonnie Kemske, Ph.D., ceramic artist, editor of Ceramic Review
Embodied Ceramics: engaging the body beyond representation

10am    Coffee Break (in conjunction with the ALCC) and free time to visit the galleries or the Clarence B. Hanson, Jr. Library

10:45am     Julie Pierotti, Associate Curator, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, TN
Celebrity Figures in English Porcelain

11:30am Emily Hanna, Ph.D., Curator of the Arts of Africa and the Americas, Birmingham Museum of Art
Clay Embodied: African Ceramics and the Human Form.  The Dick Jemison Collection of African Ceramics

12:15pm Lunch or visit the galleries

1:30pm Jeannine O’Grody, Ph.D., Chief Curator/Deputy Director, Curator of European Art, Birmingham Museum of Art
Masterpieces of Form: Michelangelo's Sculptural Models

2:15pm Meghan Tierney, Ph.D. candidate, Emory University
Considering Avian Imagery in Nasca Ceramic Effigy Vessels

3pm    Garth Clark, historian, critic, gallery owner, and collector
The Pot Tree: The Future of the Vessel in the 21st Century

3:45pm    Closing remarks and thanks