MFAH to Host National Touring Retrospective of Groundbreaking 20th-Century Artist Toshiko Takaezu, Beginning March 2, 2025

“Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within” Reveals How the Artist Reinvented Ceramic Practice in Modern Terms

HOUSTON—December 18, 2024—Born of Okinawan heritage in Hawai‘i, Toshiko Takaezu (1922–2011) was a groundbreaking 20th-century American artist most celebrated for her prolific output of expressively glazed “closed form” ceramic sculptures that ranged in scale from palm-sized works to immersive environments. Informed both by her cross-cultural heritage and deep appreciation for nature, Takaezu radically reimagined the vessel form as a site for limitless experimentation, seeking to harness the expressive potential of both abstract painting and sculpture. Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within traces the evolution of the artist’s renowned practice, considering both the worlds she conjured within individual ceramic forms and majestic installations. The exhibition will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from March 2 through May 18, 2025.

Featuring some 100 objects from public and private collections across the country, Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within presents a comprehensive portrait of Takaezu’s life and work. This retrospective charts the development of Takaezu’s hybrid practice over seven decades, documenting her earliest pieces made in Hawai‘i; her student work at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, in Michigan and during a transformative trip to Japan, in the 1950s; her years teaching at the Cleveland Institute of Art and ultimately Princeton University. To represent this evolution, the show includes a series of installations loosely inspired by ones that Takaezu created in her own lifetime: from an early grouping of functional wares from the early 1950s to an immersive gathering of monumental ceramic forms from the late 1990s to early 2000s. The exhibition also features a selection of Takaezu’s vibrant paintings and masterful weavings, many of which have rarely been seen.

“We are honored to partner with the Noguchi Museum in bringing Toshiko Takaezu’s pathbreaking work to Houston,” commented Gary Tinterow, director and Margaret Alkek Williams chair of the MFAH. “As a pioneering figure and revered teacher, her single-minded investigation of form, function, and sound continues to resonate today.”

“As the first nationally touring retrospective of the artist’s work in 20 years, Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within connects to the Museum’s own strength in American studio ceramics and abstract art,” commented Elizabeth Essner, Windgate Foundation associate curator of craft at the MFAH. “Takaezu’s vital role within the landscape of 20th-century American art comes alive in this important reappraisal of her multifaceted artistic practice.”

The exhibition highlights a vast range of ceramic sculptures, including selections from Takaezu’s late masterpiece, the Star Series. Created between 1994 and 2001, these human-scale closed forms were each named for a celestial body. At the MFAH, Zeus (c. 1995) stands at a soaring five and half feet tall, as its stoic gestures of black and mahogany glaze reach nearly its full height. Between 1979 and 1980, Takaezu often exhibited her ceramics and weavings alongside the work of her dear friend, the revolutionary fiber artist Lenore Tawney (1907–2007). In an installation recreated from one of their two-person exhibitions, Tawney’s ethereal yet commanding textile Heart floats above a black sand landscape of Takaezu’s Moons—including the MFAH's Purple Moon (c. 1998), an abstract kaleidoscope of color.

Sound also plays an important role in this exhibition, as many of Takaezu’s closed ceramic forms contain unseen “rattles.” To allow visitors to explore these interior soundscapes firsthand, the exhibition will include a series of demonstration videos by composer, sound artist, and exhibition co-curator Leilehua Lanzilotti. In addition, Lanzilotti’s immersive video the sky in our hands, our hands in the sky (2023), commissioned for the exhibition, combines the recorded sounds of Takaezu’s closed forms with footage shot at the volcanoes of the Big Island of Hawai‘i—the base of Kīlauea, the slopes of Mauna Loa and the top of Mauna Loa. Layers of sound, texture, color, and light bring the viewer into Takaezu’s multisensory landscapes.

Organization and Funding
Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within is organized by The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, with assistance from the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation and the Takaezu family. 

The exhibition and its national tour have been made possible through lead support from the Henry Luce Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Generous support is provided by:
Lenore G. Tawney Foundation
Michael W. Dale Exhibitions Endowment for Decorative Arts, Craft, and Design
John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation
James Cohan Gallery
Anne Lamkin Kinder
Nana Booker
Bettie Cartwright
Leatrice and Melvin Eagle
Kerry F. Inman and Denby Auble
Jeffrey Spahn

The exhibition is co-curated by Noguchi Museum curator Kate Wiener, independent curator Glenn Adamson, and sound artist and composer Leilehua Lanzilotti. The exhibition was conceived and developed with former Noguchi Museum Senior Curator Dakin Hart.

About the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 
Spanning 14 acres in the heart of Houston’s Museum District, the main campus comprises the Audrey Jones Beck Building, the Caroline Wiess Law Building, the Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden and the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building. Nearby, two house museums—Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, and Rienzi—present collections of American and European decorative arts. The MFAH is also home to the Glassell School of Art, with its Core Residency Program and Junior and Studio schools; and the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), a leading research institute for 20th-century Latin American and Latino art as well as the Michelin-starred restaurant Le Jardinier at the MFAH. www.mfah.org
 
Media Contact 
Melanie Fahey, Senior Publicist, MFAH 
mfahey@mfah.org  | 713.398.1136