Harriet Coulter Joor, decorator, Joseph Meyer, potter, Vase with a Design of Daffodils, ca. 1903. Ceramic. Newcomb Art Collection, Tulane University 2012.6.2.

“Women, Art, and Social Change: The Newcomb Pottery Enterprise” is on view at the Princeton University Art Museum until July 10, 2016. The free exhibit features over 100 objects including pottery, textiles, metalwork, jewelry, graphic arts, and bookbinding. 

The Newcomb Pottery forged a distinctly Southern brand of the American Arts and Crafts movement and is considered one of the most significant makers of American art pottery of the 20th century. Established in 1895, Newcomb Pottery (housed within Newcomb College, Tulane University’s former women’s college, in New Orleans) was a pioneering educational experiment focused on training young women to support themselves financially by designing, producing, and selling handcrafted art objects.
”Women, Art, and Social Change: The Newcomb Pottery Enterprise” is the largest and most comprehensive national exhibition of Newcomb Pottery in nearly three decades, and the one-of-a-kind objects on display offer insight into the women who made a lasting contribution to American art and design.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 340-page hardcover publication titled The Arts and Crafts of Newcomb Pottery, which includes essays by Sally Main, former senior curator at the Newcomb Art Museum, and other American art history and decorative arts scholars in addition to a timeline, artist biographies and new photography of 250 Newcomb Pottery objects. There will also be a related lecture on Saturday, June 18 at 3 p.m. titled, “Newcomb Pottery: Myths of Regionalism and Gender” by Martin Eidelberg, professor emeritus of art history at Rutgers University.

For more information, visit www.artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/exhibitions.