San Francisco Ceramic Circle Illustrated Lecture 

Russell Hartman, Senior Collections Manager, Department of Anthropology

California Academy of Sciences

SFCC lectures are complimentary for Museum visitors

About the talk: Native people in the American Southwest have been making pottery for nearly 2,000 years. The materials and techniques are more or less the same everywhere, but from the earliest times, tribal groups developed their own preferences for decorating their pottery. In this talk, illustrated with many examples from the collection at the California Academy of Sciences, Russ Hartman will trace the history of pottery making from the region’s earliest inhabitants to modern-day Pueblo and other groups still living in Arizona and New Mexico. Also included will be examples by some of the leading contemporary Native American potters, who both maintain and expand centuries-old traditions.

About the speaker: Russ Hartman has served as the Collections Manager in the Dept. of Anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences since 1990. Prior to that he was the Director-Curator of the Navajo Nation Museum in Arizona, where his interest in native pottery began. He is the author of Navajo Pottery: Traditions and Innovations, and most recently curated the “Generations in Clay” exhibit at SFO, featuring 130 examples of pottery from the Academy’s collection.

Next SFCC Lectures

Sunday, March 21, 2010 “The Evolution of an Art Form: the French Chocolatière”
Suzanne Perkins - Gordon, Author and Member of the SFCC and CIETA

Sunday, April 11, 1.30 PM. Reinventing Porcelain: Celebrating the Meissen Manufactory’s Tricentennial.
Malcolm Gutter, Collector, Author and member of the SFCC.
Note: this lecture will be presented at SFO Airport, International Terminal Museum at 1.30 PM.