Exhibition Index

Selections from the Allan Chasanoff Ceramic Collection
November 4,2000 - May 27, 2001
Mint Museum of Craft + Design
220 North Tryon Street
Charlotte, NC 28202

The Allan Chasanoff Ceramic Collection includes 448 works from North America, Europe, and Asia. The exhibition of this collection features 157 sculptures and vessels from the 1970s, '80s, and '90s that express diverse creative approaches to ceramic art. Areas of focus range among figurative sculpture, fanciful teapots and soup tureens, British studio ceramics, traditional Chinese and contemporary American styles of trompe l'oeil, west coast Funk art, organic abstraction and deconstructed vessels.

Over the last twenty-five years, Allan Chasanoff has amassed an eclectic array of artworks that range widely in subject matter, form, artistic intent, and achievement. My response to this complexity was to impose an artificial order on the collection by grouping like things and creating identities for these groups. The resulting categories are obvious in some cases -"animal portraits," "trompe l'oeil," "figure"- but others serve as umbrella terms- "tradition reconsidered," "fractured vessels." This system of classification is a response to the collection's areas of focus; to Chasanoff's own database that uses keywords to define and link objects across the collection; and to the similarity and recurrence of artistic ideas. Many objects fit into several categories, and many defy classification. Many would not have the same resonance if they were not mimicked by other artworks in the collection. Latent characteristics surface due to the relationships created in the groupings. This mix-and-match quality creates the need for interactivity, which is supplied by this website.

Mary F. Douglas, Curator
Mint Museum of Craft + Design

The Mint Museum of Craft + Design is supported by the Annual Fund Drive of the Arts & Science Council - Charlotte/Mecklenburg, Inc.; the North Carolina Arts Council, a state agency; the City of Charlotte; and its members.

Catalog Note: Catalogs of Selections from the Allan Chasanoff Ceramic Collection are available in both museum stores at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design and the Mint Museum of Art.