HOUSTON, TX.- Born of Okinawan heritage in Hawai‘i, Toshiko Takaezu (1922-2011) was a groundbreaking 20th-century American artist most celebrated for her prolific output of expressively glazed “closed form” ceramic sculptures that ranged in scale from palm-sized works to immersive environments. Informed both by her cross-cultural heritage and deep appreciation for nature, Takaezu radically reimagined the vessel form as a site for limitless experimentation, seeking to harness the expressive potential of both abstract painting and sculpture. Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within traces the evolution of the artist’s renowned practice, considering both the worlds she conjured within individual ceramic forms and majestic installations. The exhibition will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston from March 2 through May 18, 2025.

Featuring some 100 objects from public and private collections across the country, Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within presents a comprehensive portrait of Takaezu’s life and work. This retrospective charts the development of Takaezu’s hybrid practice over seven decades, documenting her earliest pieces made in Hawai‘i; her student work at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, in Michigan, during a transformative trip to Japan, in the 1950s; along with her years teaching at the Cleveland Institute of Art and ultimately Princeton University. To represent this evolution, the show includes a series of installations loosely inspired by ones that Takaezu created in her own lifetime: from an early grouping of functional wares from the early 1950s to an immersive gathering of monumental ceramic forms from the late 1990s to early 2000s. The exhibition also features a selection of Takaezu’s vibrant paintings and masterful weavings, many of which have rarely been seen.

“We are honored to partner with the Noguchi Museum in bringing Toshiko Takaezu’s pathbreaking work to Houston,” commented Gary Tinterow, director and Margaret Alkek Williams chair of the MFAH. “As a pioneering figure and revered teacher, her single-minded investigation of form, function, and sound continues to resonate today.”

“As the first nationally touring retrospective of the artist’s work in 20 years, Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within connects to the Museum’s own strength in American studio ceramics and abstract art,” commented Elizabeth Essner, Windgate Foundation associate curator of craft at the MFAH. “Takaezu’s vital role within the landscape of 20th-century American art comes alive in this important reappraisal of her multifaceted artistic practice.”

The exhibition highlights a vast range of ceramic sculptures, including selections from Takaezu’s late masterpiece, the Star Series. Created between 1994 and 2001, these human-scale closed forms were each named for a celestial body. The MFAH Zeus (c. 1995) stands at a soaring five and half feet tall, as its stoic gestures of black and mahogany glaze reach nearly its full height. Between 1979 and 1980, Takaezu often exhibited her ceramics and weavings alongside the work of her dear friend, the revolutionary fiber artist Lenore Tawney (1907- 2007). In an installation recreated from one of their two-person exhibitions, Tawney’s ethereal yet commanding textile Heart floats above a black sand landscape of Takaezu’s Moons—including the MFAH Purple Moon (c. 1998), an abstract kaleidoscope of color. .

Sound also plays an important role in this exhibition, as many of Takaezu’s closed ceramic forms contain unseen “rattles.” To allow visitors to explore these interior soundscapes firsthand, the exhibition will include a series of demonstration videos by composer, sound artist, and exhibition co-curator Leilehua Lanzilotti. In addition, Lanzilotti’s immersive video the sky in our hands, our hands in the sky (2023), commissioned for the exhibition, combines the recorded sounds of Takaezu’s closed forms with footage shot at the volcanoes of the Big Island of Hawai‘i—the base of Kīlauea, the slopes of Mauna Loa and the top of Mauna Kea. Layers of sound, texture, color, and light bring the viewer into Takaezu’s multisensory landscapes.