Listening to Clay

Alice and Halsey North are pioneering collectors and advocates of contemporary Japanese ceramics. They produced and organized ceramic tours of Japan for the New York Japan Society. Their collection was featured in the exhibition Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for the New Century, held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2005-6 and New York’s Japan Society 2006-7. A primary focus of their collecting and advocacy has been to introduce new audiences to this art form. They have donated the major portion of their collection to American museums, notably The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. The Met also houses the database, archives, and library for their collection. Louise Allison Cort is Curator Emerita of Ceramics, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution. Her research interests are historical and contemporary ceramics in Japan, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. Her publications include Shigaraki, Potters’ Valley (1979, reprinted in 2000), Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics: A Close Embrace of the Earth (with Bert Winther-Tamaki, 2003), and Chigusa and the Art of Tea (with Andrew Watsky, 2014). In 2012, she received the Secretary’s Distinguished Scholar Award, Smithsonian Institution, and the Koyama Fujio Memorial Prize for research on historical and contemporary Japanese ceramics.