Major Exhibition Coming to Tang Museum
Kathy Butterly, “Wave ‘Em Like You Just Don’t Care,” 2001, porcelain, earthenware, and glaze, 7 3/4 x 4 x 3 1/4 inches, Tang Museum collection, gift of Elizabeth Harvey Levine.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College presents “Kathy Butterly: Assume Yes,” a major exhibition of approximately fifty works by one of the most influential sculptors working in ceramics today. On view from Feb. 14 through July 26, the exhibition spans more than thirty years of Butterly’s practice, from early sculptures dating to the mid-1990s to recent works.
For nearly four decades, Kathy Butterly has created sculptures with individuality, using clay and glaze to paint in three dimensions. Known for their small scale and extraordinary detail, her works combine technical virtuosity with humor, sensuality, and formal daring. Butterly pushes porcelain and earthenware to their limits, producing objects that oscillate between abstraction and the body, spontaneity and precision, seriality and difference.
“Kathy Butterly: Assume Yes” is organized by Ian Berry, Dayton Director of the Tang Teaching Museum, and is presented as part of the museum’s 25th anniversary year. The exhibition builds on a long relationship between Butterly and the Tang: Berry organized a focused solo show of her work at the museum in 2006, and her work anchored The Jewel Thief exhibition in 2010. Four works by the artist held in the Tang’s permanent collection are included in the exhibition.
“I started a conversation with Kathy Butterly about her work more than twenty years ago,” Berry said. “Her sculpture continues to surprise and expand, and it is an honor to bring these masterpieces together in one room. They reward close looking and sustained attention, revealing how free creativity and experimentation can continually reinvent a medium.”
The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication of a major monograph on Butterly’s work later in the spring. The catalogue features contributions by Glenn Adamson, Ian Berry, Forrest Gander, Theodora Bocanegra Lang, Nancy Princenthal, and Elena Sisto.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
The Tang is presenting a series of events in conjunction with the exhibition. All are free and open to the public.
Saturday, Feb. 14, 5 p.m.: Opening Reception and Conversation with the Artist
Join Dayton Director Ian Berry in conversation with Kathy Butterly to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Thursday, March 26, Noon: Curator’s Tour of “Kathy Butterly: Assume Yes”
Ian Berry leads an exhibition tour.
Thursday, April 9, 6 p.m.: Dunkerley Dialogue with Kathy Butterly
A public conversation between the artist and a Skidmore College faculty member (to be announced).
The exhibition is free and open to the public. The Tang Teaching Museum, located on the Skidmore College campus at 815 N. Broadway in Saratoga Springs, New York, is open Tuesday–Sunday, noon–5 p.m., with extended hours until 9 p.m. on Thursdays.