Syd Carpenter: Planting in Place, Time, and Memory

Woodmere Art Museum

Pew Fellow Syd Carpenter, 3 Mother Pins on a Vine, 2021; Clay, mixed media, 18" x 37" x 26". Photo courtesy of the artist. — Pew Fellow Syd Carpenter, *3 Mother Pins on a Vine*, 2021; Clay, mixed media, 18" x 37" x 26". Photo courtesy of the artist.

A clay sculpture covered in brown glaze by Pew Fellow Syd Carpenter. — Syd Carpenter, *Everelena Cannon*, 2009; clay, acrylic, and graphite, 41” x 35 ¾” x 23 ¾”. Courtesy of Woodmere Art Museum.

Recipient

Grant Year 2023

Grant Amount $300,500

Status Forthcoming

Updated December 22, 2023

A multi-site retrospective for ceramic artist and Pew Fellow Syd Carpenter spans her five-decade career with a comprehensive exhibition at Woodmere Art Museum along with installations at the Maguire Art Museum at Saint Joseph’s University and the Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College. The exhibition centers on four themes in Carpenter’s work: historical Black American land practices, farming iconography, clay as a metaphor for collective memory, and a broader mutually supportive community of Black women ceramic artists.

The total grant amount represents project funding plus an additional 20% in unrestricted general operating support.

Recipient

Woodmere Art Museum

Woodmere Art Museum centers the art and artists of Philadelphia in exhibitions that explore the achievements and social ideas of Philadelphia’s artists in the broader context of American art. The museum's permanent collection began with a gift from Charles Knox Smith, who purchased the estate in 1898 and transformed his home into a showcase for his collection of Philadelphia and Hudson River paintings, which make up the core of the museum's collection today.

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