Chicago has a fresh reason to plan a museum day downtown. The Art Institute of Chicago will present Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan, an exhibition celebrating the inventive work of 40 contemporary women artists and the expressive possibilities of ceramic sculpture. The show opens December 13, 2026 and runs through March 14, 2027.
Organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition brings together more than 45 works drawn from a major private collection. Visitors will encounter sculptures that stretch far beyond familiar ideas of pottery, moving from organic and figurative forms to vivid abstraction while exploring themes of nature, the body and material itself. A centerpiece is Women’s Art Group (the Mingei Art Group) from 1953-54 by Kawai Kanjiro and fellow members of the Mingei folk-craft movement.
The Art Institute describes Radical Clay as a survey that recasts Japanese contemporary ceramics through the lens of women artists who began working after 1970. Together, their pieces show clay as a bold, contemporary medium – delicate one moment, monumental the next – and offer a sweeping introduction for anyone curious about Japanese art today.
The museum is at 111 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago. As with any major exhibition, check the museum’s site before visiting for current information on related talks, tours and special programming tied to the show. It promises to be one of the winter season’s most distinctive museum experiences in the city.
Photo: GualdimG, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
