Shaping Taste: Asian Ceramics and the Making of American Art & Design

Glenn Adamson is a curator, writer and historian based in New York and London. The author most recently of A Century of Tomorrows (Bloomsbury, 2024), he is currently Curator at Large for the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, Artistic Director for Design Doha - a biennial festival in Qatar - and editor of Material Intelligence, a quarterly online journal published by the Chipstone Foundation. Adamson’s previous publications include Thinking Through Craft (2007); The Craft Reader (2010); Postmodernism: Style and Subversion (2011, with Jane Pavitt); The Invention of Craft (2013); Art in the Making (2016, with Julia Bryan-Wilson); Fewer Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects (2018); Objects: USA 2020; and Craft: An American History (2021). Current curatorial projects include “Hella Jongerius: Whispering Things” for the Vitra Design Museum and “Keith Haring in 3D” for the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

David L. Barquist is The H. Richard Dietrich, Jr., Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Art Museum, a position he has held since 2004. He received an A.B. in fine arts from Harvard College, an M.A. from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, and his Ph.D. in history of art from Yale University. From 1981-2004 he served as Assistant, Associate, and Acting Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery. His books include American Tables and Looking Glasses in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (1992) and Myer Myers: Jewish Silversmith in Colonial New York (2001), the subject of his dissertation and the catalogue for a traveling loan exhibition. He co-organized the 2008-2009 traveling exhibition Setting the President’s Table: American Presidential China from The Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Currently he is co-curating the exhibition Workshop of the World: Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia, opening in July 2026 at the Philadelphia Art Museum. He is also working on completing the catalogue of the Museum’s American silver collection; the first volume was published in 2018, and volume two will be forthcoming in 2027.

Monika Bincsik is the Diane and Arthur Abbey Curator for Japanese Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She has organized numerous exhibitions for the museum, notably “Kimono Style: The John C. Weber Collection” (2022); “Kyoto: Capital of Artistic Imagination” (2019); “Japanese Bamboo Art: The Abbey Collection” (2017); and “Discovering Japanese Art: American Collectors and the Met” (2015). She has published extensively on Japanese decorative arts and collecting history, recently in Kimono Style: Edo Traditions to Modern Design (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2022) and The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2019).

Ulysses Grant Dietz was Curator of Decorative Arts and Chief Curator at The Newark Museum for 37 years. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Yale in 1977, and his master of arts in American Material Culture from the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in 1980.

The curator of 114 exhibitions during his tenure, Mr. Dietz is particularly proud of his work on The Newark Museum’s 1885 Ballantine House, which was re-interpreted and restored in 1994. His first ceramics exhibition was The Newark Museum Collection of American Art Pottery of 1984. A quarter-century later he produced Masterpieces of Art Pottery, 1880-1930 for the museum’s centennial. In 1997, Mr. Dietz was the project director for The Glitter & The Gold: Fashioning America’s Jewelry, the first-ever exhibition and book on Newark’s once-vast jewelry industry. In 2003, Mr. Dietz published Great Pots: Contemporary Ceramics from Function to Fantasy, the first catalogue of the Museum’s studio pottery collection, which accompanied an exhibition of the same title. Additionally, Mr. Dietz has published numerous articles on decorative arts, as well as books on the Museum’s ceramics, 19th-century furniture, and jewelry collections.

Elizabeth A. Williams, David and Peggy Rockefeller Curator of Decorative Arts and Design, joined the RISD Museum in 2013, following curatorial positions at LACMA and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the Kress Foundation Department of Art History at the University of Kansas, and an M.A. degree in Art History and a B.S. degree in Architectural Studies from the University of Missouri. At LACMA, she was the editor of and contributing author to Daily Pleasures: French Ceramics from the MaryLou Boone Collection, as well as the exhibition curator; and the curator and author of The Gilbert Collection at LACMA. At RISD, she co-curated Arlene Shechet: Meissen Recast; and curated Beth Katleman’s Games of Chance, Paul Scott’s New American Scenery, and Gorham Silver: Designing Brilliance 1850-1970, for which she served as editor of and primary contributing author to the accompanying publication. She recently curated a cross-cultural ceramics exhibition, entitled Trading Earth: Ceramics, Commodities, and Commerce; and curated A Shared Journey: The Barkan Contemporary Ceramic Collection at the RISD Museum, along with serving as the editor of and contributing author to the accompanying publication. Williams is the President of the American Ceramic Circle.