The 1930s was a time of rapid change in the field of ceramics. As the Great Depression pummeled the American economy, a new generation of potters and sculptors founded independent studios that were smaller and more nimble than art potteries like Cowan, Pewabic, and Rookwood, all of whom either vastly curtailed their production or closed. Founded in 1900 at Alfred University to support the state’s growing ceramic industry, the New York State College of Ceramics began to hit its stride with professors like Charles Fergus Binns and Marion Fosdick. Talented graduates like Arthur Baggs designed for Marblehead pottery in Massachusetts before it too fell victim to the Great Depression.
The 1930s also brought a wave of European potters who were fleeing Nazi persecution or seeking opportunities not available to them at home. Gertrud and Otto Natzler, Marguerite and Franz Wildenhain Marguerite Wildenhain shown at left), and Otto and Vivika Heino all brought their expertise to the United States during this decade. In California, important university programs developed at UCLA and USC under the leadership of potters Laura Andreson and Glen Lukens. Cleveland also emerged as a hub for ceramic sculptors. Michael Powolny at the Cleveland Institute of Art mentored a generation of pioneering sculptors like Russell Barnett Aitken, Edris Eckhart, and Viktor Schreckengost.
In 1931, Anna Wetherill Olmsted became director of the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts. She keenly followed these developments—chiefly because of her close friendship with Syracuse-based potter Adelaide Alsop Robineau, herself a transformative figure in the history of American ceramics. After Robineau died in 1929, Olmsted launched a juried exhibition that she named the Robineau Memorial Exhibition. In its first year, this was a low-budget affair. Staged on a meager $400 budget atop sateen-covered folding tables, it only hosted potters living in New York State. Despite these seemingly humble origins, the exhibition’s founder was clear about her ambitions. By 1935, juror R. Guy Cowan articulated these lofty aspirations for the Ceramic Nationals:
To improve the ceramic art in America
To educate the American public to take an intelligent interest in ceramic art and to realize that ceramics is a major art
To make sales, secure commission and positions for ceramic artists, and increase their income as well as their status as artists
The first Robineau Memorial Exhibition was such a tremendous success that artists from across the country lobbied to participate in a new national exhibition. Not only did Olmsted respond to this outcry by expanding to a national model, but she also used her connections to develop a network of museums across the country to host a traveling Ceramic Nationals exhibition. Eventually, more than seventy museums—including the Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the De Young Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Art Boston—used the Ceramic Nationals to introduce their audiences to contemporary ceramics.
With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Sixth Ceramic National in 1938 traveled to four European destinations before its triumphant finale at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Throughout the 1930s, Olmsted continued to expand this network. She also added sponsors like IBM, who made it possible for artists from more than fifteen Latin American countries to show at the 10th National in 1941. The increasingly international momentum of the Ceramic Nationals came to a screeching halt in 1942, when the Museum decided to suspend the exhibition for the duration of World War II. Many of the artists featured in the early Ceramic National exhibitions, such as Russell Barnett Aitken and Viktor Schreckengost, served in the war alongside a new generation of artists who eventually came to dominate the Ceramic Nationals when they resumed.
Credits:
Jamie Young