CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.-The exhibition "Centers and Edges: Modern Ceramic Design and Sculpture,1880-1980" at the Smart Museum of Art will close with an informative afternoonincluding a curator tour, reception, and lecture. At 1:30 pm, Smart Museum Senior Curator Richard A. Born will lead a lively tour of the exhibition, which features select works from several influential movements in the history and development of twentieth-century ceramics and design. The tour will focus particularly on the interface between individual studio pottery and the functional ceramic design of industry. Following the tour, a reception will offer guests the chance to speak with Mr. Born and Moira Vincentelli before she gives her talk at 3 pm. A writer, educator, and curator, Ms. Vincentelli will give a lecture titled “Gendered Vessels: Women and Studio Ceramics in Britain,” examining the role of women in the history of modernist ceramics.

Ms. Vincentelli’s lecture will consider gender issues relating to the entry of women into the commercial ceramics studios of Great Britain. In the early part of the twentieth century, when decorating was seen as their main contribution, women had to fight for their right to throw on the wheel, breaking both a gender and a class stereotype. Through partnerships with men and other women, women shaped the history of studio pottery and several ceramists emerged as some of the most innovative practitioners post-1970. Drawing on Ms. Vincentelli’s recent research on women working in Wales, the final part of the talk will address the psychology of creativity and the pleasures of working with clay as related to the life choices of women in the early 21st century. Makers who will be considered include Hannah Barlow, Dora Lunn, Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie, Lucie Rie, Ruth Duckworth, Alison Britton, Claire Curneen.

Ms. Vincentelli is Lecturer in Art History and Curator of Ceramics at the School of Art, the University of Wales. The author of "Women and Ceramics: Gendered Vessels" (Manchester University Press, 2000) and "Women Potters: Transforming Traditions" (A&C Black, 2003), she is an influential teacher and author. Her inquiry crosses the boundaries between contemporary ceramics, studio pottery, gender studies, oral history, and social anthropology. As Curator of the Ceramic Collection and Archive at Aberystwyth, Ms. Vincentelli is also responsible for the development of one of the major holdings of studio ceramics in Britain.

"Centers and Edges" is presented at the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago until September 18, 2005, and includes exceptional works by Gertrud and Otto Natzler, Peter Voulkos, and Ruth Duckworth, among many others. The tour and lecture are free and open to the public. Guests are welcome to attend all or part of the afternoon’s events.