Hawai‘i Ceramic Artist Toshiko Takaezu Retrospective Exhibit Opens This February
One of Hawai‘i’s best-known artists is honored with a deep dive into her work at the Honolulu Museum of Art from Feb. 14–July 26.
Editor’s note: This story first ran in our March 2024 issue and has since been updated with new details about the 2026 exhibition.
Display inspired by Toshiko Takaezu’s installation in Toshiko Takaezu: 1989–1990, The Gallery at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, NJ, October 4–November 18, 1990. Takaezu nestled her ceramic works in and around the waves of her high-pile weaving Floating Seaweed II (c. 1965; Private Collection). Installation view, Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within, The Noguchi Museum, New York, March 20–July 28, 2024. Photo © Nicholas Knight. Courtesy of The Noguchi Museum
This February, fans of groundbreaking Hawai‘i-born artist Toshiko Takaezu are in for a treat, as a nationally touring retrospective of her work—the first in 20 years—opens at the Honolulu Museum of Art. Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within showcases more than 100 pieces from the late artist’s body of work, from her most famous closed ceramic forms to woven textiles, acrylic paintings and a bronze bell.
The retrospective debuted at the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in New York City in 2024, then traveled to museums in Detroit, Michigan; Houston, Texas; and Madison, Wisconsin. It completes its two-year run at HoMA. Takaezu studied at the museum when it was the Honolulu Academy of Arts and had her first solo museum exhibition there in 1959 before achieving widespread renown.
Toshiko Takaezu admiring one of her pots around the late 1950s. Photo: John Paul Miller, Courtesy of the American Craft Council Library & Archives. © Family of Toshiko Takaezu
Co-curator and local sound artist Leilehua Lanzilotti was named a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for music for a string orchestra piece inspired by art at The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu. Her work focused on pieces at the museum at its opening in 1988, including one of Takaezu’s. Lanzilotti’s mother, Louise Keali‘iloma King Lanzilotti, was the museum’s first curator of education. “I don’t remember her,” Leilehua says of Takaezu, who died in 2011. “But I know my mom interviewed her. She was around all the time at the museum.”
That connection is one of many that led Lanzilotti to this project. To bring Takaezu’s works to life, she created a 15-minute demonstration video in which she picks up ceramic pieces and rolls them around so viewers can hear the rattle of clay inside. She also directed a 46-minute sound and video installation of a new work she wrote using the rattling sounds. Both videos are part of the exhibition; the concert program can be purchased in the HoMA Shop. Also available is a lofty monograph featuring essays by art scholars, curators and artists.
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Takaezu often pointed to the importance of the darkness within her closed sculptures, hence the exhibition’s title. “As somebody from Hawai‘i, that feels like inherently a very Hawai‘i thing. … On the surface, this is a very beautiful place, but what makes this such a special place is that connection to place, those relationships and that connection to land, and that quiet calm within,” Lanzilotti says.
Toshiko Takaezu, Egg-Shaped Moon, 1970. Stoneware. Crocker Art Museum, gift of the artist, 2007.10.15. Eclipse, 2003. Stoneware. Philadelphia Museum of Art: Purchased with funds contributed by The Women’s Committee and the Craft Show Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Mrs. Morris Stroud, 2004, 2004-93-1. Moon, 1990s. Stoneware. Allentown Art Museum, gift of the artist, 2006, 2006.33.9. New Black Moon, 1990–91. Stoneware. Collection of Linda Leonard Schlenger. Purple Moon, c. 1998. Stoneware. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Leatrice S. and Melvin B. Eagle Collection, gift of Leatrice and Melvin Eagle, 2010.2265. Installation view, Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within, The Noguchi Museum, New York, March 20–July 28, 2024. Photo © Nicholas Knight. Courtesy of The Noguchi Museum
Unique to HoMA’s exhibit are commissioned ceramic works by Hawai‘i artist Dane Hi‘ipoi Nakama, whose pieces inspired by Takaezu’s closed forms are meant to be interacted with. Gently lift and turn them to hear clay rattle inside. For Mahina ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i, or Hawaiian Language Month, a brochure in Hawaiian highlights six of Takaezu’s works that reflect Hawai‘i’s influence on the artist. The sculpture terrace near the HoMA Shop and café will also showcase some of Takaezu’s pieces that were not part of the traveling exhibition but are part of the museum’s collection.
The exhibit spans multiple galleries—the usual temporary exhibit gallery 28, plus gallery 10, with a bronze bell hanging near the Central Courtyard. There will also be a number of talks and workshops for the public to enjoy, including a behind-the-scenes conversation about the show with Lanzilotti and HoMA curators Tyler Cann and Katherine Love on opening day, Feb. 14, at 3 p.m. Other highlights include a free hands-on art-making Community Sunday that also celebrates Takaezu’s Okinawan heritage on Feb. 15; a March 20 conversation with artists Martha Russo, Kate Randall and Kaili Chun, who all knew Takaezu; and a ceramic rattle workshop led by Daven Hee and Joy Sanchez on April 18 (registration opens Feb. 24).
The exhibit runs Feb. 14 to July 26.
Honolulu Museum of Art, 900 S. Beretania St., open Wednesday through Sunday. Admission: adults $25; kama‘āina $15; free for youth 18 and under, SNAP beneficiaries and college students enrolled at any Hawai‘i state university or college. honolulumseum.org, @honolulumuseum
Katrina Valcourt is the executive editor of HONOLULU Magazine.
