Katherine Choy: Radical Potter in 1950s New Orleans
Lecture by Mel Buchanan
Tuesday, November 7 at 6 PM / Free
Join the RosaMary Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the New Orleans Museum of Art Mel Buchanan for her presentation on Katherine Choy: Radical Potter in 1950s New Orleans.
Katherine Choy: Radical Potter in 1950s New Orleans
Katherine Choy was one of the first ceramicists to bridge Asian traditions into Modern abstract art. In 1952, the young potter came to New Orleans to head the ceramics program at Newcomb, where she led that famous pottery into a new era of art. This presentation, drawn from a 2022 exhibition and catalog at the New Orleans Museum of Art, outlines the fervent life and radical pottery of an artist that was celebrated by the American craft world, but has nonetheless been nearly forgotten. The jagged, painterly vessels that Katherine Choy made were as artistically advanced as any made elsewhere in the 1950s, conveying—in a new idea from the world of painting—that ceramics, too, could be a canvas for emotional expression.
Mel Buchanan has served as the RosaMary Curator of Decorative Arts & Design at the New Orleans Museum of Art for ten years, where she is currently working on a 2024 exhibition and catalogue of the museum’s renowned collection of historic glass. Buchanan serves on the board of The Decorative Arts Trust and of the American Ceramic Circle, and in 2023 became a member of the Committee for the Preservation of the White House. Previously, Buchanan worked at The RISD Museum in Providence, Rhode Island and at the Milwaukee Art Museum. She holds a BA from Yale University and an MA from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture. Mel lives in New Orleans with her husband, Lance, and two children, Axel and Leila.