{"id":1923451,"date":"2026-05-06T15:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T12:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1923451"},"modified":"2026-05-06T15:45:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T12:45:00","slug":"ceramics-are-everywhere-has-the-market-caught-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1923451","title":{"rendered":"Ceramics Are Everywhere. Has the Market Caught Up?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Betty-Woodman-and-Elizabeth-Murray-at-David-Kordansky.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

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\n\tLately, art fans in the three biggest cities in the US (and no doubt elsewhere) have found themselves surrounded by ceramics. At museums, galleries, and fairs, artists working in this ancient medium are showing work ranging from classic forms like cups and vases to figurative and abstract sculpture.<\/p>\n

\n\tAllow us to start with a litany of such shows, in no particular order.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn New York, Kathy Butterly\u2019s diminutive pieces sold out at James Cohan at $45,000 each. Nicole Cherubini\u2019s show at Friedman Benda nearly sold out at prices up to $65,000. Ruby Neri\u2019s work was on view uptown at Salon 94, with prices peaking at $75,000. And there was Ron Nagle at Matthew Marks (which, not long before, showed Ken Price).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his latest show at Gagosian, Theaster Gates celebrated David Drake, an enslaved South Carolina ceramicist who influenced the Chicago artist, partly known for his work in the medium. And the New Art Dealers Alliance organized NADA Ceramics, at Tribeca venue the Locker Room (March 6\u20138), where the more than 40 exhibitors included artists, galleries, and studios.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn California, meanwhile, at least three galleries at the latest edition of the Frieze fair showed ceramics. New York\u2019s Olney Gleason sold clay sculptures by Bosco Sodi for prices in the range of $72,000; Jeffrey Deitch (New York and LA) devoted a solo booth to works by California-born Sharif Farrag priced between $14,000 and $35,000; and David Kordansky (New York and LA) showed Doyle Lane\u2019s glazed pots. Kordansky followed that up with a show devoted to Elizabeth Murray paintings and Betty Woodman earthenware; prices for the latter ranged as high as $190,000.<\/p>\n

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Kathy Butterly, Hinoki<\/em> (2025).<\/span>Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York. Photo by Alan Wiener.<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, three of the 31 exhibitors at the sophomore edition of Post-Fair had impressive pieces on view: Anton Kern of New York brought vessels by Francis Upritchard (made with potter Nicholas Brandon), priced between $10,000 and $16,000; Mariposa of LA sold several pieces by Peter Schlesinger at prices up to $40,000; and Marta, also of LA, showed George Sherman, priced between $4,000 and $20,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Francis Upritchard\u2019s work on display with Anton Kern at Post-Fair, Los Angeles, 2026.<\/span>\u00a9 Francis Upritchard, image courtesy the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tAway from the fair, Alma Berrow\u2019s work was on view at Megan Mulrooney, at prices from $800 to $12,000. The dealer will follow up in May with a show of Maddy Inez, the gallery\u2019s solo LA debut with the artist, the granddaughter of artist Betye Saar (and daughter of Allison Saar), with pieces listed for between $1,750 and $15,000. And David Zwirner opened a show of ceramic sculptures and works on paper by Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, organized by ceramics artist Shio Kusaka (through May 22), with the ceramic pieces priced between $5,000 and $80,000.<\/p>\n

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Nicole Cherubini\u2019s work on display at New York gallery Friedman Benda.<\/span>Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Nicole Cherubini. Photography by Pierre Le Hors<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tAt April\u2019s Expo Chicago, meanwhile, New York gallery Bienvenu Steinberg & C showed Korean American artist Jane Yang-D\u2019Haene\u2019s works, priced between $9,000 and $24,000; Miami\u2019s Mindy Solomon sold Dee Clements\u2019 pieces incorporating ceramic and woven baskets, priced between $12,000 and $16,000; and Chicago\u2019s The Mission Projects showed Nicola Costantino, with prices between $600 and $15,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBeyond fairs and galleries, there are also current East Coast institutional shows. In New Jersey, the recently reopened Princeton University Art Museum has dedicated a room to Japanese potter Toshiko Takaezu (through July 5); the RISD Museum in Providence, Rhode Island, offers \u201cA Shared Journey: The Barkan Contemporary Ceramic Collection\u201d (through March 5, 2028); and Kathy Butterly\u2019s work remains on view at the Tang Teaching Museum in Saratoga Springs, New York (through July 26).<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\u2018It\u2019s Been a Slog\u2019 for Ceramics to Be Accepted as High Art\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tCeramics have in production since the Paleolithic era, and the medium\u2019s contemporary practitioners join major 20th-century artists such as Lucio Fontana, Joan Mir\u00f3, Isamu Noguchi, and Pablo Picasso, who all worked extensively in the medium.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the question remains as to whether prices remain modest for ceramics despite the lengthy tradition and the current acceptance of the material in high-art venues.<\/p>\n

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Mindy Solomon Gallery at Expo Chicago 2026, showing Dee Clements.\u00a0<\/span>Photo by Timothy Johnson<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t\u201cCeramics are now fully embedded into the art community\u2019s language, and artists are freely working with it as a sculptural medium that\u2019s widely accepted,\u201d said Salon 94 founder Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn in a phone conversation.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe acceptance of the medium has been a long time coming, notes David Rago, who started dealing in ceramics at a flea market in New Jersey at the age of 17. He founded Rago Auctions in 1984 and is a partner at Rago\/Wright. \u201cIt\u2019s been a slog,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause pottery was and is still, to some degree, viewed as a craft.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Theaster Gates, \u201cDave: All My Relations,\u201d 2026, installation view at Gagosian New York.<\/span>Artwork by Theaster Gates \u00a9 Theaster Gates. Photo: Maris Hutchinson. Courtesy Gagosian and Dave the Potter Legacy Trust LLC<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tSo, which is it? Fully embedded as an art medium, or still viewed as craft? Or some of each? For those buying and selling ceramics, it\u2019s a live question whether old associations\u2014cups, vases, women\u2019s work\u2014have kept prices low by comparison with painting or even with other forms of sculpture. First it should be said that many, many artists work in the medium; some toil in ceramics exclusively, while others treat it promiscuously, as one of many forms they work in. (\u201cWe see it absorbed into other practices,\u201d as Greenberg Rohatyn put it.) Some create mixed-medium works that include it as one of several; Simone Leigh\u2019s second-priciest work at auction, Las Meninas II<\/em> (2019), incorporates ceramics along with terracotta, steel, and raffia. It fetched $3.1 million at Sotheby\u2019s New York in 2023, while her highest price for a work solely in ceramic is $730,800, paid for Lusaka <\/em>(2020) at Christie\u2019s New York in 2025.<\/p>\n

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Installation view, \u201cMagdalena Suarez Frimkess,\u201d organized by Shio Kusaka, David Zwirner, Los Angeles, 2026.<\/span>Photo by Elon Schoenholz, courtesy David Zwirner<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tSo questions about price levels could perhaps be answered in as many divergent ways as there are ways that artists work in the medium, as David Kordansky acknowledges: \u201cWhile there\u2019s been a noticeable surge of interest in ceramics in recent years, the market hasn\u2019t moved uniformly\u2014there\u2019s still a meaningful distinction between emerging enthusiasm for the medium and sustained recognition of its most rigorous practitioners,\u201d he said in an email.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAt least one observer is convinced that the craft associations linger, but sees that changing with new generations of buyers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCraft associations still keep prices relatively low,\u201d said Benjamin Critton of LA\u2019s Marta in an email, adding that \u201cas more ceramic work gets shown, there\u2019s a happy material confusion, or innocent conflation, or flattening, or maybe just material agnosticism, or at worst a lack of material curiosity, among younger collectors who view the work very generally and freely as Sculpture, and are less concerned with the associations of its medium.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\tA Growing Market, But Peak Prices Remain Modest\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tOn the secondary market, the presence of ceramics has grown dramatically in the last decade, according to statistics from art analytics company ARTDAI. In 2016, just 695 lots came to auction, and sales totaled just shy of $30 million. In 2025, the number of lots had grown to just over 6,200, and the sales total had more than doubled, to $62.5 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFontana, Mir\u00f3, Noguchi and Picasso all have healthy auction records for ceramics pieces, but their highs in the medium are in each case a fraction of those notched for their paintings or their sculpture in other mediums.<\/p>\n

\n\tPicasso\u2019s La Chouette en Col\u00e8re<\/em> (1953) sold for $2.5 million at Sotheby\u2019s New York in 2018. Three of his ceramic works have exceeded the $1 million mark. His record price for a painting is $179.4 million, for Les Femmes d\u2019Alger (Version \u2018O\u2019)<\/em>, 1955, established at Christie\u2019s New York in 2025.\u00a0Fontana\u2019s Figura Femminile Con Fiori (Female Figure with Flowers)<\/em>, standing some 8 feet high and dating from 1948, sold for \u00a31.8 million ($2.5 million) at Sotheby\u2019s London in 2018. Seven of his ceramic pieces have sold for north of $1 million. His record overall, for his 1964 painting Concetto spaziale, La Fine di Dio<\/em>, is $29.2 million, set at Christie\u2019s New York in 2015.<\/p>\n

\n\tMir\u00f3\u2019s Grand vase <\/em>(1956) sold for $797,500 at Sotheby\u2019s Paris in 2013, one of three of his ceramics to top a half-million dollars. His high price overall is $36.9 million, paid for his 1927 painting Peinture (Etoile bleue)<\/em> at Sotheby\u2019s London in 2012. Noguchi\u2019s ceramic The Elephant <\/em>(1952) fetched $339,750 at Christie\u2019s New York in 2013, far exceeding its $40,000 high estimate. His granite sculpture The Family <\/em>(1956) set his auction record of $12.3 million at Sotheby\u2019s New York in 2023.<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite the growth in the market seen over the last decade, prices for some canonical artists remain low relative to their stature and the quality of their work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Nicola Costantino, Composicion Grande<\/em> (2025).<\/span>The Mission Gallery.<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tOn the West Coast in the 1950s, Peter Voulkos established ceramics departments at both the Los Angeles County Art Institute (now the Otis College of Art and Design) and the University of California at Berkeley. He taught artists like Ron Nagle and Ken Price, who became mainstays of the next generation; Nagle was included in the 2013 Venice Biennale, and a Price retrospective toured major American museums starting that same year. Voulkos is one of the rare ceramics artists with a seven-figure price attached to his work. His Black Bulerias <\/em>(1958) fetched $1.3 million at Phillips New York in 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tPrice is a giant in the field, but just two of his pieces have topped the half-million-dollar mark; his M. Green <\/em>(1961) holds the record at $554,000, set at Christie\u2019s New York in 2023. Betty Woodman\u2019s high stands at $131,250, fetched at Rago Auctions for Untitled (Diptych)<\/em>, ca. 1990, in 2021.<\/p>\n

\n\tMany renowned artists haven\u2019t broken into six figures on the secondary market. Nagle\u2019s high is just under $55,000, fetched in 2012 for Criminal Negligee, 2012<\/em>, at Christie\u2019s Paris in 2021. Kathy Butterly\u2019s auction high is $32,250, paid for Green Reach <\/em>(2018) at Phillips New York in 2025 (eight of her top ten prices were seen in 2024 and 2025). Ruby Neri\u2019s priciest ceramic piece is an untitled 2014 work showing a seated woman, which sold for just $12,100 at Bonhams Los Angeles in 2023.<\/p>\n

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Sharif Farrag\u2019s work on view with Jeffrey Deitch at Frieze Los Angeles 2026.<\/span>Photo by Charles White\/JW Pictures. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York and Los Angeles.<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tNADA Ceramics started at a very modest level, ranging from under $100 to pieces as high as $10,000, and the vibe was more craft fair than art fair, with exhibitors set up on little tables, cheek by jowl. (Pun lovers, take note: curator Larry Ossei-Mensah showed his work with New York\u2019s All\u2019Bout Clay, under the nom d\u2019artiste <\/em>Larry Potter.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI woke up one morning and realized, there\u2019s no dedicated ceramics event in New York, and that\u2019s kind of crazy,\u201d said NADA executive director Heather Hubbs in a phone conversation. She got more than 130 proposals from exhibitors for the 40 or so slots; dealers paid just $250 for a table at the Locker Room, a venue in Tribeca, a huge gallery hub. Visitors streamed through all weekend, said Hubbs. She had organized a similar event previously, at NADA\u2019s headquarters, but this was the first under the name NADA Ceramics and at a dedicated venue. \u201cI would like to turn it into a more elevated, serious thing,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019d like to believe there\u2019s a world in which the two could co-exist, with more functional stuff and then booths devoted to sculpture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShereen Al-Sawwaf, an associate specialist in the post-war and contemporary art department at Christie\u2019s, noted in a video conversation that typically smaller sizes (which generally correspond to lower prices) may be part of the medium\u2019s appeal, with most pieces topping out at modes sizes due to the restrictions of the scale of the kilns in which they are fired.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve been pretty oversaturated with mega-sized paintings that really take up a space, and you could say same thing about sculpture,\u201d she notes. \u201cPeople are starting to change how they think about scale in terms of what they buy. Some are really in love with ideas of miniatures and smaller objects.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile champions of the medium might wish for secondary market sales records to be higher, the modest prices may, of course, be good news for collectors. Al-Sawwaf pointed out that Christie\u2019s (which achieved several of those record prices noted above) regularly includes in its sales ceramic pieces by many artists in the $5,000 to $10,000 range, often about the same prices as they command on the primary market.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAll have sold relatively well against estimates,\u201d said Al-Sawwaf, adding, \u201cI see this trend only continuing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/market\/ceramics-are-everywhere-museums-galleries-fairs-market-1234781999\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Betty-Woodman-and-Elizabeth-Murray-at-David-Kordansky.jpg?w=1024″] Lately, art fans in the three biggest cities in the US (and no doubt elsewhere) have found themselves surrounded by ceramics. At museums, galleries, and fairs, artists working in this ancient medium are showing work ranging from classic forms like cups and vases to figurative and abstract sculpture. Allow us to start […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1923451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1923451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1923451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1923451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1923451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}