This is a virtual event via Zoom hosted by Pucker Gallery.
This event will be recorded and uploaded to our YouTube channel.
Join us Friday, 16 May 2025 at 4:00PM ET for a conversation on the three generations of the Hamada Family.
This webinART will be an opportunity to appreciate the exceptional art created by three generations of the Hamada Family. Shoji Hamadafounded the Mingei movement and his son Shinsaku Hamada managed the family's 30 apprentice workshop until age 40, when he began exhibiting his own art. He spent 54 years sharing his artwork with the world and this exhibition will honor him alongside the work of both his father and his son. We look forward to discussing nearly 80 years of the Hamada Family's art.
The webinART will include contributions from:
Tomoo Hamada – Third Generation of Hamada Family Potters
Yayoi Shinoda – Associate Curator of Japanese Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO
Mara Williams – Brattleboro Museum Curator Emerita
Dr. Carl Herbert – Gallery Associate
Bernard Pucker – Gallery Director
Mugi Hanao – Friend and Translator
The exhibition The Hamada Family: From One Generation to the Next - A Tribute to Shinsaku Hamada (1929-2023) will be on view at Pucker Gallery 10 May through 22 June 2025.
About Our Panelists:
Tomoo Hamada was born in 1967 as the second son of Shinsaku Hamada and a grandson of Shoji Hamada. He earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in sculpture from Tama Art University in Tokyo. He exhibits, lectures, and gives workshops internationally and was integral in helping the pottery community of Mashiko rebuild after the Tohoku earthquake of 2011. He organized the Shoji Hamada climbing kiln project (2015 and 2018) and fired Hamada’s eight chamber climbing kiln after it was restored from earthquake damage. He was the chair for the Mashiko & St Ives Centenary Project celebrating the founding of Leach Pottery by Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada in 1920. His ceramic works are included in the permanent collections of numerous museums including the Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art, the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, and the Embassy of Japan in the UK. He lives in Mashiko on the original compound his grandfather built and is the Director of the Shoji Hamada Memorial Mashiko Sankokan Museum.
Yayoi Shinoda is the Assistant Curator of Japanese Art at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Since joining the museum in 2013, she has contributed to several notable projects and exhibitions, including the traveling exhibition Weaving Splendor: Treasures of Asian Textiles (co-curated in 2021), the online exhibition Bridged by the Love of Clay: Traces of the Connection between Artists in Japan, England, and the U.S. Midwest (2022), and Hokusai: Masterpieces from the Spencer Museum of Art, the Richardson-North Collection, and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (2024). She holds an MA in Museum Studies from the University of Missouri–St. Louis and an MA in Art History from the University of Kansas, where she is currently pursuing her PhD.
Mara Williams assumed Emerita status in 2021, after curating exhibits at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center for thirty-three years. Her area of expertise is modern and contemporary art. As a partner in Arts Bridge LLC, Williams leads exhibition teams for institutions developing new large-scale museum projects. She holds an A.B. in theatre from Boston College, an MFA in museology from Syracuse University, and has completed doctoral course work and passed comprehensives in comparative arts at New York University. She is Chair of the Wolf Kahn Foundation. She has served as chair of the Vermont Arts Council and as a board member of the New England Museum Association, as well as three terms on the Senate Curatorial Advisory Committee for the U.S. Capitol.
Dr. Carl Herbert is a fourth-generation physician whose career has been devoted to helping infertility patients overcome a wide spectrum of obstacles to create their families. Early in his career he participated in the founding of one of the first IVF centers in the United States. For more than forty years, Dr. Herbert has contributed to the growth and development of assisted reproductive technologies, continually implementing the evolving techniques and optimizing their clinical applications for care. The ambiguity of a socially awkward accolade, “You got me pregnant!,” has become a recurrent reward, both humorous and joyful. By serendipity, Dr. Herbert walked into Pucker Gallery for the first time in 1985 when visiting Boston for a medical conference. From this point on, his nascent interest in art grew under the generous tutelage and encouragement of Mr. Pucker. A close personal friendship evolved as they visited artists and exhibitions around the world; exchanged thoughts on the experience and intrinsic value that art, in all its many forms, can provide individuals and society; and shared writings which illuminated these principles.
Bernie Pucker is the director of Pucker Gallery, which he founded with his wife, Sue, on Boston's historic Newbury Street in 1967. Pucker Gallery represents over fifty artists from around the world, presenting approximately ten exhibitions annually, often paired with artist talks, virtual “WebinARTs,” and Gallery receptions. Bernie is currently a Board Member at the Japan Society, Boston, and the Jewish Publication Society. He also serves on the Leadership Council for Facing History and Ourselves as well as the Artistic Advisory Board for the Terezin Music Foundation. Previously, he has served as President of Solomon Schechter Day School, President of the Newbury Street League, and Board Member for the Friends of Copley Square and The Unity Project, among others. Bernie received his MA in Modern Jewish History from Brandeis University and his BA in History and English Literature from Columbia College.