Museum of Ceramic Art / New York

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Museum of Ceramic Art / New York

The Museum of Ceramic Art - New York (MoCA/NY) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3). A virtual museum and home to Ceramic World Destinations.

09/04/2026

What happens when ancient craft meets emerging technology?

For French-born, New York-based artist Nicolas Touron, 3D clay printing is a tool for building complex ceramic worlds. Touron’s captivating sculptures explore storytelling, intuition, and the possibilities of a practice that exists between disciplines.

Working between digital design and hands-on making, Touron combines modular forms, traditional ceramic processes, and unexpected material behavior to create sculptures shaped as much by chance as by intention. “I consider the element of unpredictability essential,” he writes.

Explore our feature on Nicolas Touron now at the link in bio.
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08/28/2026

Opening September 2 at Downtown Art Center in Honolulu (Downtown Art Center), Marginalized by Amber Aguirre (Amber Aguirre) brings together a series of clay busts portraying notable individuals who have been excluded from mainstream society because they differ from the dominant white, heterosexual, Christian, male culture that has historically held social power.

Each bust depicts an American Sign Language (ASL) sign representing one aspect of the subject’s marginalized identity. Aguirre’s use of ASL is intentional: a language that has itself faced exclusion and a history of being denied recognition and accessibility.

Working in clay, Aguirre explores identity, inequality, social justice, and systems of power, creating psychologically charged portraits that confront prejudice while foregrounding the resilience and humanity of marginalized communities.

Marginalized is on view September 2–26 at Downtown Art Center, 1041 Nuʻuanu Ave, Second Floor, Honolulu, HI 96817

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08/26/2026

“DRIFT. Dune to Dogger Bank”, currently on view at Museum Panorama Mesdag (Museum Panorama Mesdag) in The Hague, Netherlands, through September 13, brings together 22 contemporary artists, researchers, and makers to reconsider humanity’s relationship to the North Sea and its coastal landscape.

Stretching from the Dutch coast to the Dogger Bank, a shallow area of the North Sea at the center of ecological and political debate, the exhibition brings together installations, sculpture, painting, sound, scent, and interactive works that offer new ways of experiencing the sea.

Among the participating artists is Jonat Deelstra (Jonat Deelstra). Last year, we featured his Funeral Home to the North Sea (2021), a project imagining ceramic urns as instruments of marine restoration. The work reframes burial as an ecological act, envisioning human remains as potential refuge and sustenance for endangered marine life.

That same ecological imagination carries into Deelstra’s work in DRIFT, connecting craft, ritual, and marine science while asking how we might understand the sea beyond human interests.

Read our full feature on Jonat Deelstra at the link in bio.

Photo credits:
DRIFT. Dune to Doggerbank - Museum Panorama Mesdag (Freek van den Bergh)
Erik Wurz
Hans Deelstra
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07/21/2026

What do we lose when convenience replaces care?

At Sculpture Space NYC in Long Island City, Queens, (Sculpture Space NYC) Rethinking Plastic: Returning to Clay brought together 27 artists from the International Academy of Ceramics (IAC (AIC-IAC)), who responded to this question through functional objects, sculpture, installations, and conceptual works. Together, the invited and juried artists imagined alternative futures in which ceramics reclaim many of the roles plastic has assumed over the past century.

Rather than offering a definitive solution to the plastic crisis, the exhibition encourages us to reconsider the objects we use every day—and how the materials we choose shape our habits, values, and relationship to the world around us.

Read the full feature by Johnny Macas-Friere (johnny macas-freire) at the link in our bio.

Cover: Wrap Me in Bubbles by Adil Writer (Adil Writer)

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07/16/2026

Inside many of Toshiko Takaezu’s sculptures lies a hidden soundscape.

Beginning in the 1960s, Takaezu placed small pieces of clay inside her closed ceramic forms, creating hidden rattles that only revealed themselves through touch. Describing these sounds as “sending messages,” Takaezu invited viewers to engage with the unseen interior life of her work.

This reel features “closed form etudes,” demonstrations of hidden sonic landscapes within Takaezu’s closed forms as well as the physicality required to sound them, from the exhibition’s sound guide by composer and multimedia artist Leilehua Lanzilotti (Leilehua Lanzilotti).

Inspired by Takaezu’s deep connection to Hawaiʻi, Lanzilotti’s compositions illuminate the wonder, intimacy, and sense of place embedded in the artist’s multisensory practice, encouraging viewers to experience these works beyond sight alone.

Many thanks to the Toshiko Takaezu foundation (Toshiko Takaezu Foundation) for supporting this feature. Read it in full at moca-ny.org or the link in bio.
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There are 10 days left to experience Worlds Within: The Art of Toshiko Takaezu at its final tour stop, the Honolulu Museum of Art (Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA)), before the exhibition closes on July 26.

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07/07/2026

Where do some of ceramics’ most accomplished artists go when their ideas outgrow the studio?

For nearly five decades, Mission Clay Art & Industry has become a destination for artists whose ambitions demand more than a traditional ceramics studio can offer. From Jun Kaneko and Matthew Barney to Don Reitz, Chris Gustin, Lisa Reinertson, and countless others, artists come not only for the scale—but for the rare partnership between creative vision and industrial expertise. With its five-story extrusion machines, a 44,000-cubic-foot kiln, forklifts, cranes, and factory engineers working alongside artists, Mission Clay makes possible what most ceramic studios simply cannot.

As Program Director Bryan Vansell (Bryan Vansell) puts it: “Dream big—because you can at the Mission Clay Art and Industry Program.”

Read the full feature and learn more about the program at the link in bio.

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07/06/2026

Over twenty years after her last nationally touring exhibition, Toshiko Takaezu’s legacy is being reexamined on the scale it has long deserved.

Worlds Within is more than a retrospective—it is a landmark study of one of the twentieth century’s most influential abstract artists. The exhibition and its accompanying monograph (Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within) trace Takaezu’s singular practice across ceramics, painting, textiles, and bronze while illuminating the cultural, artistic, and personal forces that shaped her vision. The monograph features more than 180 full-page plates and essays that place Takaezu’s work firmly within the histories of abstraction, craft, and American art. Together, they offer one of the most comprehensive explorations of her life and enduring impact to date.

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Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within, published by the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York, is available through Yale University Press 🔗

Learn more about Toshiko Takaezu on her foundation’s website 🔗

Many thanks to the Toshiko Takaezu foundation and Peter Held for supporting this feature. Read it in full at moca-ny.org or the link in bio. 🔗

🔗 Tap this post’s icon in our link in bio to access all featured resources.

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