Alfred Ceramic Art Museum announces the Betty Woodman Collection at Alfred University

The Alfred Ceramic Art Museum is pleased to announce the establishment of the Betty Woodman Collection at Alfred University, a gift of 29 objects and works on paper representing Woodman's oeuvre.

The collection is now a feature of the museum's permanent collection thanks to a major gift from George and Betty Woodman's son Charles Woodman and his wife Andrea Torrice. It includes significant ceramic pieces from Woodman's early days as a studio potter to her career as a major contemporary American artist celebrated by a retrospective exhibition at Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2006.

Woodman (1930-2019) attended the School for American Craftsmen at Alfred University from 1948 until1950. The establishment of the Betty Woodman Collection at her alma mater, considered to be one of the world's most important ceramic art centers, is a significant recognition of Woodman as one of the foremost artists in the history of ceramic art.

Alfred University enrolls approximately 80 undergraduate and graduate students in its ceramic art program each year. These students, as well as historians and scholars of ceramic art, will have rare access to Woodman's art as a means of study, allowing first-hand knowledge of how she explored ideas and techniques throughout her life.

Betty Woodman, Pesce San Pietro, 1988, glazed earthenware, 12.5 x 19 x 19 inches. ACAM 2025 Photo by Brian Oglesbee

"In establishing the Betty Woodman Collection, the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum seeks to fulfill a unique role in honoring and securing Betty Woodman's legacy, which no doubt will continue to inspire the future of ceramic art.," said Wayne Higby, former director of ACAM and now professor emeritus of Alfred University.

Arthur Danto, American art critic renowned for his work in philosophical aesthetics, writes the following in his essay for Woodman's retrospective catalogue: "As a craftsperson, Betty Woodman makes vases as her most saliant product; as an artist, she takes the vase as her most saliant subject. So, the vase in her oeuvre exists on two planes at once and answers two sets of imperatives." Danto concludes, "All of Woodman's vessels embody utility sacrificed to beauty. Beauty redeems, restorers, rejoices."

For additional Information concerning the Woodman Collection, please contact Benjamin Evans, the Wayne Higby Director and Principal Curator Alfred Ceramic Art Museum via email at: [email protected]