The Foundation
Exhibition installation of Takaezu’s pieces at the Denver Art Musuem, 2011. Photo : Jim Dion
MISSION
The Mission of the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation is to preserve and promote the artistic legacy of Toshiko Takaezu and to educate the public about her work and teachings.
About Us
The Toshiko Takaezu Foundation was founded in 2015, to preserve and promote the legacy of renowned abstract sculptor Toshiko Takaezu (1922-2011) and to educate the public about her work and teachings. Her art was deeply influenced by nature, her experiences in Hawai’i and New Jersey, as well as her travels around the world, particularly in Japan and Okinawa. The Foundation facilitates upcoming exhibitions, supports research projects, provides access to archives, and ensures public access to Takaezu's artistic contributions.
Press/announcements
Toshiko Takaezu with Moons, August 1979. Toshiko Takaezu Archives. Artwork © Family of Toshiko Takaezu.
Announcing Exhibition: UCCA Clay, Yixing, China
On November 7, 2026, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art Clay (UCCA Clay) presents Toshiko Takaezu: Rounder Than Round, Toshiko's first solo exhibition in China, on view through March 7, 2027. Organized by UCCA Clay with the support of the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation, the exhibition surveys nearly five decades of work in sculpture, textile, and painting. Most visitors will be seeing her work for the first time.
UCCA Clay opened in 2024 on the site of the Number Two Yixing Ceramic Factory, the fourth museum in UCCA's constellation and the first contemporary art institution in a city that has been a center of ceramic production for more than a thousand years. Designed by Kengo Kuma and Associates, the 2,400-square-meter building is Kuma's first to use clay as a primary material, with a façade of hand-fired terracotta tiles the color of Yixing's zisha, or purple clay. UCCA director Philip Tinari discusses the museum and its place in Yixing's ceramic tradition here.
A bilingual English and Chinese catalogue will accompany the exhibition, published by the Foundation with a curatorial essay by Nana Zou and a new essay by Glenn Adamson. More details will follow this fall. The exhibition page is here.
Installation view, “Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within,” Honolulu Museum of Art, February 14 to July 26, 2026. Photo by Alec Singer, courtesy Honolulu Museum of Art.
Exhibitions: Worlds Within Closes in Honolulu
Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within concluded its national tour at the Honolulu Museum of Art on July 26. Organized by The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum with assistance from the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation and the Takaezu family, the retrospective traveled from The Noguchi Museum to Cranbrook Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Chazen Museum of Art before arriving in Hawai‘i. We owe a great deal of thanks to our initial partners at the Noguchi, including Amy Hau, Glenn Adamson, Kate Wiener, Leilehua Lanzilotti, and Dakin Hart, and to the curators, registrars, development staff, and many others behind the scenes who made it possible.
More than 120 works were on view in Honolulu across sculpture, painting, textile, and bronze. HoMA’s own collection holds 104 works by Takaezu, and the museum’s relationship with her began in 1947, when she was taking painting classes at what was then the Honolulu Academy of Arts. She had solo exhibitions there in 1959 and 1973 and visited throughout her life, most recently in 2010.
The exhibition included videos by Native Hawaiian composer and co-curator Leilehua Lanzilotti exploring the role of sound in Takaezu’s work, and newly commissioned pieces by Hawai‘i ceramic artist Dane Hi‘ipoi Nakama that visitors could hold and shake.
A recording of the apprentice panel discussion, featuring Kaili Chun, Kate Randall, and Martha Russo is available to view here.
Toshiko Takaezu teaching in Hawai‘i, late 1940s to early 1950s. Toshiko Takaezu Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Oral History Program with the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art
The Foundation’s oral history partnership with the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art is underway. A coordinator and interviewer are in place, and the first interviews are being recorded. The initial phase will produce ten interviews with artists, students, family members, and longtime collaborators. Interviews will be preserved and made publicly accessible through a dedicated page at the Archives, and the Foundation will retain copies of transcripts and recordings for future research.
This program is an important part of the Foundation's legacy work, capturing stories from the community to enhance scholarship and preserve the many accounts that make up the life and legacy of Toshiko Takaezu.
Grants and Fellowships
Toshiko Takaezu with student Bunny Duhl at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, 1958. Takaezu first taught at Haystack in 1957 and returned in the decades that followed. Courtesy Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.
The First Toshiko Takaezu Fellowships at Haystack
The first Toshiko Takaezu Fellowships at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts were awarded this year to Kerima Aberra and Michelle Lin, selected through Haystack's juried Fellowship review. Each fellowship supports participation in a two-week summer workshop in Ceramics or Fiber at Haystack in Deer Isle, Maine, and provides tuition, room and board, and a monetary award to offset studio materials and travel.
Kerima, a ceramic artist and instructor from Virginia whose work draws on Eritrean coffee and tea traditions and Islamic design, is attending Egyptian + Islamic Design in Clay with Ibrahim Said. Michelle, a weaver and arts organizer from the Bay Area, is attending Weaving the Space Between with Angie YooJin Kim. The fellowship honors that relationship.
Honolulu Museum of Art Art School
The Foundation has made two grants to the Honolulu Museum of Art: $5,000 to the Art School’s ceramics program, supporting the integration of Takaezu’s work and approach into its curriculum, and $5,000 in support of Worlds Within during its Honolulu presentation.
Support: Ruth Foundation for the Arts
The Toshiko Takaezu Foundation has received support from the Ruth Foundation for the Arts, in the form of a Core Grant of $150,000 in unrestricted operating support distributed over three years. Unrestricted support of this kind is rare, and it is essential to our operations. We are grateful to the Ruth Foundation for the Arts. A press release is available here.
Honolulu Benefit
In February, roughly seventy friends of the Foundation gathered at the Honolulu home of Richard and Judie Malmgren for our first benefit, held during the opening week of Worlds Within at HoMA. The evening raised $59,600 through ticket sales, donations, and art sales. We are grateful to the Malmgrens for opening their home, to Allison Wong and Hannah Parker for their organization and advice, to all who traveled to be there, and to those who donated.
Darlene Fukuji speaking to guests at the home of Richard and Judie Malmgren, Honolulu, February 2026. Photo by Justin Brancato.
TTF and Whitney staff during the Artist Legacy Coalition intern site visit at the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program, July 13, 2026. Artwork © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.
Artist Legacy Coalition and Studio Institute
The Foundation is a member of the Artist Legacy Coalition, a consortium of ten artist foundations that together run a cohort-based summer internship for students and recent graduates, in partnership with Studio Institute. The program gives students paid experience inside working artist foundations, a field that has been difficult to access.
This summer the Foundation hosted Amelie Pak, who has been building the research infrastructure behind our collection and archives work. On July 13 we co-led a site visit for the full intern cohort at the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program, presented jointly with the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. Board member Peter Russo and Executive Director Justin Brancato spoke about Takaezu’s trajectory and the work of a young foundation, followed by a tour of the studio building led by Whitney staff.
Installation view, “Toshiko Takaezu: Voices of Abstraction,” The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, New York, April 11 to July 19, 2026. Photo by Jim McLaughlin, courtesy The Hyde Collection. Artwork © Family of Toshiko Takaezu.
Other Exhibitions
Toshiko Takaezu: Dialogues in Clay closed at the Princeton University Art Museum on July 5, part of the inaugural installation of the museum’s new building and a recognition of her nearly three decades teaching at Princeton.
Toshiko Takaezu: Voices of Abstraction was on view at The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, NY, pairing her moons and closed forms with Abstract Expressionist paintings from the museum's permanent collection. A panel discussion on May 21, moderated by Hyde curator Derin Tanyol with exhibition curator Jill Fishon-Kovachick and former apprentices Tim Jones, Ben Eberle, and Darren Prodger, is available here. The Toshiko Takaezu Foundation was proud to support this program.
Her work also appeared in East of the Pacific: Making Histories of Asian American Art at the Columbus Museum of Art. The exhibition originated at Stanford's Cantor Arts Center in 2022 as the largest of three inaugural presentations of the Asian American Art Initiative, launched in 2021 and co-directed by Marci Kwon and Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander. Toshiko's #8, a stoneware work she gave to the Cantor in 2008, appears in a section on histories of abstraction, grouped with artists whose nonrepresentational work has long been overlooked.
Looking ahead, Takaezu will be included in Kaihō: Japanese Women Artists after 1945, the first European survey of its kind, opening at Mudam Luxembourg on September 25, 2026 and traveling to Lenbachhaus Munich and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao through March 2028.
Also in 2027, her work will be included in Afterlives: Japanese American Artists and the Postwar Era at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, February 28 to September 12. Organized by MOCA chief curator Clara Kim with guest curator Kris Kuramitsu, the exhibition looks at a generation of Japanese American artists, photographers, and designers working in the postwar decades, and at the transpacific exchanges that shaped their work.
Exhibitions: Worlds Within Continues at the Chazen Museum of Art
The landmark retrospective Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within opens at the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin–Madison on September 8, 2025 and runs through December 23, 2025.
This major exhibition traces Takaezu’s six-decade career across sculpture, ceramics, painting, weaving, and installation, and follows its successful run at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Photograph by Tom Grotta.
Announcement: Worlds Within Monograph Nominated for Major Award
We are excited to share that Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within has been nominated as one of six finalists for Ceramic Book of the Year 2025 by the American Ceramic Circle. The winner will be announced this fall.
This recognition highlights the impact of the monograph and the generosity of those who supported its publication. The comprehensive Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within monograph, published by Yale University Press in association with the Noguchi Museum, is available through the Noguchi Shop.
Richly illustrated with nearly three hundred images, the volume includes essays by Glenn Adamson, Dakin Hart, Kate Wiener, Margo Machida, and others, as well as recollections from Takaezu’s apprentices. It offers the first full retrospective account of her six-decade career across ceramics, painting, weaving, and sculpture.
Upcoming Exhibition: Princeton University Art Museum
The Princeton University Art Museum will celebrate the opening of its new building with Toshiko Takaezu: Dialogues in Clay (October 31, 2025 – July 5, 2026).
This exhibition celebrates Takaezu’s innovative approach to clay and her decades of teaching at Princeton. Her seminal closed forms will be shown alongside works by her mentors and contemporaries, situating her as a central figure in 20th-century art and as a pioneer who elevated ceramics into a powerful form of abstraction and expression.
Exhibitions: Wild Earth: JB Blunk and Toshiko Takaezu at the Columbus Museum of Art and Worlds Within: Toshiko Takaezu at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston
Earlier this year, Worlds Within received widespread acclaim at the MFA Houston. Meanwhile, Wild Earth: JB Blunk and Toshiko Takaezu at the Columbus Museum of Art brought her work into dialogue with that of her peer JB Blunk. Both artists undertook formative journeys to Japan in the mid-1950s, experiences that profoundly shaped their approaches to clay.
For Takaezu, an eight-month trip in 1955–56 deepened her connection to her cultural heritage and brought her into contact with leading figures of both the Mingei movement and the avant-garde Sōdeisha group. While she admired the Mingei potters, she was especially drawn to Sōdeisha’s radical, forward-looking perspective, which shaped her lifelong pursuit of clay as a medium of abstraction and expression, an influence reflected in the resonances explored in Wild Earth.
Photograph courtesy the Columbus Museum of Art. Photo by Luke Stettner.
Internship Spotlight: Dina Fukunaga-Brates
This summer, the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation hosted Dina Fukunaga-Brates as part of our internship partnership with the Studio Institute and Aspen Institute. Dina recently presented her project at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice, representing TTF with distinction.
Her work has supported our digital infrastructure planning, laying the groundwork for new searchable databases on Takaezu’s art and archives, as well as public resources that will expand access to her legacy. We are grateful for Dina’s contributions and proud to support the next generation of arts professionals.
Announcement: Justin D. Brancato as Inaugural Executive Director
December 12, 2024 - We are pleased to announce the appointment of Justin D. Brancato as our inaugural Executive Director. Brancato has served as the Deputy Director and Director of Archives at the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation since 2010, began his tenure with the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation on November 1st. He brings a wealth of experience and a deep passion for the arts.
“Toshiko Takazeu is a master artist, known for her innovative experiments with glazes, textures, and sounds. She is a pillar in the ceramics community and mentored artists who have gone on to achieve significant accolades in the field. Leading the foundation dedicated to celebrating and fostering a deeper understanding and appreciation of Toshiko’s work is a tremendous honor. Our goal is to promote her legacy not only among the next generation of ceramists but across all artistic disciplines, extending her influence to those who remain unaware of the rare talent and pure force that is Toshiko Takaezu. Toshiko was a world-class artist and educator, and it is vital that her contributions are recognized and celebrated,” Brancato stated.
“Through his extensive planning proposals, meticulous presentation and thoughtful implementation of protocols and strategies, Justin has shown rare talent and notable ability,” said Jack Cowart, Executive Director of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. “Justin has much to offer the artist-endowed foundation field as a confident, emerging leader.”
Fundraising Campaign
December 12, 2024 - In celebration of Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within, we are launching a fundraising campaign. Your support will help us preserve and promote Toshiko’s artistic contributions and educate the public about her work and teachings.
With a donation of $100 or more, you will receive a beautiful exhibition poster of Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within. Your generosity will enable us to continue building programs that honor Toshiko Takaezu’s legacy.
Toshiko Takaezu Foundation Awarded Mellon Foundation Grant
December 12, 2024 - We are excited to announce that the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation has been awarded a prestigious Mellon Foundation grant. This grant will provide essential support for our ongoing efforts to ensure that Takaezu’s remarkable legacy continues to inspire future generations.
"There is tremendous momentum surrounding Toshiko Takaezu’s legacy, and this grant serves as a well-deserved recognition of her impact," said Darlene Fukuji.
Exhibition at Cranbrook Art Museum
Takaezu at Cranbrook Academy, Michigan. Unknown photographer / Courtesy Toshiko Takaezu Foundation.
December 12, 2024 - The acclaimed touring retrospective Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within continues its journey at the Cranbrook Art Museum from October 9, 2024, to January 12, 2025. This significant exhibition, featuring over 200 works, highlights Toshiko Takaezu’s enduring legacy.
Worlds Within traces the development of her practice from her early days in Hawai‘i, through her transformative years in the Midwest, to her final home in New Jersey where she taught at Princeton University. Yale University Press has published a monograph to accompany this extensive exhibition.
The Toshiko Takaezu Foundation is a Ruth Foundation for the Arts Grantee
November 18, 2022 - We are honored to be among the Fall 2022 recipients. Thank you, Ruth Foundation for the Arts!
Noguchi Museum Announces Major Touring Retrospective and Monograph on Toshiko Takaezu
June 17, 2022 - On the centennial anniversary of the birth of artist Toshiko Takaezu (1922–2011), The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum announced its forthcoming major touring retrospective and monograph centered on her work and life. Scheduled to begin in 2024, this will be the first nationally touring retrospective of Takaezu’s work in twenty years. To coincide with the exhibition, the Museum will co-publish a new monograph with Yale University Press. Donate to the exhibition here and see the press release here.
Contact Us
TOSHIKO TAKAEZU FOUNDATION
1078 Summit Ave PMB 805
Jersey City, NJ 07307