During the last five years, Old Salem Museums & Gardens, the Chipstone Foundation, and the Caxambas Foundation have collaborated on Art in Clay, an ambitious project encompassing a traveling exhibition of North Carolina earthenware masterworks, two volumes of Ceramics in America, an online virtual tour, and an Internet-accessible database of information and images of more than six hundred objects. The show opens in Milwaukee in September 2010, then travels to the Horton Center in Old Salem, the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum at Colonial Williamsburg, and the Huntsville Museum of Art in Alabama.
The educational initiatives associated with Art in Clay required the commitment of three organizations and a dedicated and diverse group of museum scholars and independent professionals. From the outset, our goal has been to reach the widest possible audience and the incorporation of multiple interpretive voices will help make this happen. In the twenty-first century, museums and other educational organizations must dedicate themselves to interacting with their audiences and with each other by supporting new research and disseminating it through creative exhibitions, thought-provoking publications, and relevant websites and networks.
Old Salem Museums & Gardens, the Chipstone Foundation, and the Caxambas Foundation firmly believe that the collaborative process yields innumerable benefits for all parties involved, and we will continue to cultivate partnerships of this sort in the years to come.
Jonathan Prown
Executive Director, Chipstone Foundation
Lee L. French
President, Old Salem Museums & Gardens
Martha Parker
President, Caxambas Foundation