I was thinking about that 10 to 12 years ago when I noticed that all the major galleries were exhibiting clay and ceramics, and even adding artists primarily working in clay to their stables. Before this, I’d seen the work of Betty Woodman and Peter Voulkos and Ken Price in major museums and galleries, but there was a limited and biased view of ceramics in the US, although that seems to have changed over the last decade or so. Not only were ceramic artists joining those galleries that had previously focused on sculpture and painting, but artists who weren’t working in clay started to experiment with it, or perhaps they just got brave enough to bring their clay work out of the studio? As we know, for hundreds and hundreds of years artists have been working with clay on its own and in tandem with other mediums, and in various stages of art production – from studies to moulds to finished work, and even functional objects. When I was organising my exhibition Ceramics in the Expanded Field (2021-2023) at MASS MoCA, I was thinking about the 10th anniversary of the ICA Philadelphia’s Dirt on Delight (2009). which showcased clay work spanning four generations.

It was a trailblazing exhibition for a museum focused on contemporary art. I wanted to take the pulse 10 years on – to ask what is happening with clay now? While the works in Dirt on Delight were mostly table-top sized, the vast gallery space at MASS MoCA allowed artists who were already working at a large scale to present that work, and it also offered artists who had never been given an opportunity to work so ambitiously the space to do so.

So, ‘Why clay? Why now?’ is perhaps a question only for some. For many, clay has always been a fertile medium.