Earthly Delights: 6,000 Years of Asian Ceramics

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to explore highlights from the Harvard Art Museums’ collection of Asian ceramics. Anchored by standout works from Korea and China, and also featuring objects from Vietnam and Japan, the exhibition emphasizes how visual, material, and technical features varied across time and place—while also drawing connections among potters working in disparate contexts.

Made between the 5th millennium BCE and the 21st century, the over 100 works in the exhibition display a wide range of techniques used by potters to channel the intense heat of the kiln. These potters, whose identities have largely not been recorded, used ceramic wares to capture the essence of East Asian cultures during their lifetimes. A selection of objects in the exhibition depicting animals and observations of the natural world provides one important window into this relationship between artists and their milieus.