There are so many dif­fer­ent ways I can answer this ques­tion because, in ret­ro­spect, I real­ized I’d grown up with ceram­ics. They were part of the water I was swim­ming in. It was part of my dai­ly expe­ri­ence, along with the fact that we ate off of ceram­ics — off of plates and cups made by peo­ple that we knew. It was part of dai­ly life and aesthetics.

When I start­ed think­ing about it as a cura­tor, I noticed that about 12 to 15 years ago there was an explo­sion of ceram­ics in some of the gal­leries in New York and in pri­vate col­lec­tions. There have been artists work­ing in clay for decades, cen­turies, mil­len­nia … But in the con­tem­po­rary world, you hadn’t seen ceram­ics so much and it had been real­ly left out of con­ver­sa­tions about con­tem­po­rary sculp­ture and rel­e­gat­ed to a world of craft, often even seen in an ethno­graph­ic context.

Every decade, we say that we’re break­ing down hier­ar­chies, but it seems like it’s nev­er enough and there are more hier­ar­chies to be bro­ken down … I think that ceram­ics are ben­e­fit­ing from this more inclu­sive view of art making.

As we look at a cul­ture that was very Euro­cen­tric and patri­ar­chal, we’re look­ing at art forms that were often rel­e­gat­ed to the side because they were con­nect­ed to the domes­tic sphere and women’s labor. Although ceram­ics are, for exam­ple, high­ly prized in Japan, a lot of the West­ern world kept them siloed. Now we’re real­iz­ing the impor­tance of inclu­siv­i­ty on so many lev­els: Who’s mak­ing art? How are they mak­ing art? What do we con­sid­er art ver­sus craft?

The title of the exhi­bi­tion is meant to com­mu­ni­cate some­thing for those who don’t know the Krauss essay and those who do. At its face val­ue, it lets peo­ple know what the show is about very direct­ly: ceram­ics in an expand­ed field of mak­ing that includes the artist’s work in the fields of pho­tog­ra­phy, print­mak­ing, video, instal­la­tion, per­for­mance, design, and architecture.

The ref­er­ence to the Krauss essay can also be rather sim­ple, but at the same time com­plex and lay­ered, so a quick answer can be chal­leng­ing. On the sur­face, my ref­er­ence to Krauss’ argu­ment sug­gests that the def­i­n­i­tions, and per­haps expec­ta­tions, of ceram­ics are being expand­ed as Krauss was not­ing about sculp­ture at the time of her arti­cle. There is anoth­er lay­er in this as well — while any def­i­n­i­tion of sculp­ture does not nec­es­sar­i­ly describe a mate­r­i­al, ​‘ceram­ics’ seems to be both a cat­e­go­ry of form, a mate­r­i­al, and a process.

An impor­tant aspect of the show in that notion of the expand­ed field and break­ing hier­ar­chies down fur­ther is that a lot of our artists are work­ing in oth­er modes of mak­ing that — like clay — are also con­sid­ered out­side the fine art world, for lack of a bet­ter word. I showed Rose Simpson’s car [titled Maria (2014)] as an image, but it’s actu­al­ly a sculp­ture. She restored this low rid­er her­self and paint­ed it to pay homage to Tewa artist Maria Mar­tinez and her black-on-black ceram­ics. But, Rose also has a degree in met­al­work, so I want­ed to show that aspect of her mak­ing, which she inte­grates into her clay sculp­tures … Arman­do Cortés made ves­sels, but, to me, he actu­al­ly made an archi­tec­tur­al piece wrap­ping MASS MoCA’s columns in adobe and cedar. So, we’re think­ing about how clay has been used for build­ing. Like­wise, Khalil Robert Irv­ing is often ref­er­enc­ing how clay is used to make bricks, and the impor­tance of that indus­try in St. Louis, where he is from.

Most of the artists are also work­ing in yet anoth­er dis­ci­pline that has been left out of muse­ums and, again, in this hier­ar­chy placed in a dif­fer­ent category.

Susan Cross is Senior Cura­tor of Visu­al Arts at MASS MoCA, where she has orga­nized exhi­bi­tions, com­mis­sions, and per­for­mances. Pre­vi­ous­ly, she was a Cura­tor at the Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um, New York.