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Ezra Shales

Ezra Shales
Title: 
Professor
Department: 
Office: 
Tower 541
Education: 
PhD Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture; MFA Hunter College; BA Wesleyan University
Industry Experience: 

Curatorial Projects

Publications

  • 2017 - "Throwing the Potter's Wheel (and Women) Back into Modernism: Reconsidering Edith Heath, Karen Karnes, and Toshiko Takaezu as Canonical Figures" in Ceramics in America 2016, (2017): 2-30
  • 2016 - "Craft" in Textile Terms: A Glossary, ed. Reineke, Röhl, Kapustka and Weddigen (Edition Immorde, Berlin, 2016), 53-56
  • 2015 - “Eva Zeisel Recontextualized, Again: Savoring Sentimental Historicism in Tomorrow’s Classic Today,” Journal of Modern Craft vol. 8, no. 2 (November 2015): 155-166 
  • 2015 - O Pioneers! Women Ceramic Artists, 1925-1960, editor, organizer, and essayist (Alfred University, 2015) 
  • 2015 - “Influence and Evolution: Fiber Sculpture...then and now,” browngrotta arts (2015) 
  • 2015 - “The Politics of ‘Ordinary Manufacture’ and the Perils of Self-Serve Craft,” Nation Building: Craft and Contemporary American Culture (Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2015), 204-221 
  • 2014 - “Where What’s Done Comes Undone (Is a Museum),” online series, Ceramics in the Expanded Field (June 2013) Republished in Studio Potter, vol. 42, no. 2 (Summer-Fall 2014): 72-76 
  • 2013 - “Mass Production as an Academic Imaginary,” Journal of Modern Craft vol. 6, no. 3 (November 2013): 267-274 
  • 2013 - “Tall Oaks Grow from Acorn Mush,” Portland Museum of Contemporary Craft’s “Object Focus: The Bowl,” 2013
  • 2012 - “A ‘Little Journey’ to Empathize with (and Complicate) the Factory,” Design & Culture vol. 4, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 215-220 
  • 2011 - “Corporate Craft: Constructing the Empire State Building,” Journal of Modern Craft vol. 4, no. 2 (July 2011): 119-145 
  • 2010 - Made in Newark: Cultivating Industrial Arts and Civic Identity in the Progressive Era (Rutgers University Press, 2010)

Awards and Honors

  • 2013 - MassArt Foundation Faculty Fellow Award
  • 2011 - New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance Authors Award for Made in Newark: Cultivating Industrial Arts and Civic Identity in the Progressive Era
  • 2010 - Joseph Kruson Award for Excellence in Teaching, Alfred University
  • 2010 - Alfred University Service Learning Grant,
  • 2010 - Emerging Scholars Award, Nineteenth-Century Studies Association
  • 2009 - Society for the Preservation of American Modernists
  • 2009 - Windgate Foundation Publication Grant

Professional Affiliations

  • Founding member of “The Commonwealth of Craft” (a working consortium of museums, schools and organizations in Boston whose missions engage with contemporary craft) 
  • Founding Member, Boston chapter of the Guild of Admirers of Chimney Sweeps, Oven Makers, Roof Tilers, Well Diggers and Potters 
  • College Art Association 
  • Design Studies Forum (CAA affiliate) 
  • Society for the History of Technology 
  • American Association of Museums 
  • Design History Society (UK) 
  • Victorian Society of America 
View Resume: