Image: Princeton Art Museum, Princeton
Princeton University Art Museum will open 'Clay Has Memory: Creative Lineages from Africa' to the public on July 19, 2026, with a members preview day on July 18. The exhibition runs through July 3, 2027, and presents works by historical, modern, and contemporary artists who use clay to sustain creative legacies from Africa.
According to the museum, the show is the first exhibition it has organized to focus on African Diasporic artistic practices. It brings together ceramic vessels and sculpture to examine how artists draw on and preserve intergenerational knowledge through clay. The museum says the exhibition references the long history of ceramics in Africa and highlights the ways craft traditions and the vitality of clay can establish new relationships to place and shared histories.
The exhibition page cites a line from scholar Vanessa Agard-Jones: “Clay remembers from whence it came.” The museum uses that idea to frame the project’s attention to memory, technique and transmission. It also states that the exhibition centers the contributions of ceramic artists, particularly the impact of women, in fostering connections across geographies and generations.
'Clay Has Memory: Creative Lineages from Africa' is curated by Perrin Lathrop, curator of African art at Princeton University Art Museum. The exhibition page identifies one work illustrated with the announcement: Zizipho Poswa’s 'uNa’kaMzingisi (Mzingisi’s Mother)' from 2024, a glazed earthenware sculpture now in the museum’s collection.
The museum’s email bulletin placed the exhibition under its “Up Next” heading and noted a members preview day on July 18. The website lists a related public talk, 'Curator Perrin Lathrop on Clay Has Memory', for July 18 from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., along with a members preview day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and an insider reception from 5 to 7 p.m.
The exhibition has leadership support from The Terra Foundation for American Art and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support comes from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation; the Kathleen C. Sherrerd Program Fund for American Art; the Melanie and John Clarke Exhibition Fund; the Princeton University Humanities Council’s David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Project; Princeton University’s Africa World Initiative, Department of African American Studies, and Graduate School–Access, Diversity and Inclusion; and the Virginia and Bagley Wright, Class of 1946, Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art.
Princeton’s exhibition page lists the run of 'Clay Has Memory: Creative Lineages from Africa' as July 19, 2026, to July 3, 2027, at Princeton University Art Museum in Princeton, New Jersey.
