ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how curatorial practice has impacted on the construction of ceramic identity, and the role of museums and galleries in shaping the ways that ceramics are perceived and encountered by the exhibition-going public. In the modern and post-modern periods, the home has been both an important and an undervalued location for encountering art, particularly ceramics. Exhibitions have been used to construct the identity of the vessel, disrupting its role as a functional craft object and repositioning it, with varying success, as a sculptural object. The location of the exhibition in an art gallery rather than a craft gallery was important in shifting the critical context of ceramics. Ceramicists' use of different settings for the exhibition of their work, particularly former domestic spaces, indicates that the discipline is untroubled about being encountered in a place where vessels may be first recognized for their functional associations.
