March 2, 2026
Ezra Shales, a professor in the history of art department at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, will explore the pleasures of drinking vessels in Pitchers of American Life: Art Within Reach.
Shales is the author of The Shape of Craft (2017) and Made in Newark: Cultivating Industrial Arts and Civic Identity in the Progressive Era (2010). He has contributed to the Journal of Design History, The Journal of Modern Craft and exhibition catalogs for artists Polly Apfelbaum, Neil Brownsword, Beth Cavener, Kim Dickey and Shari Mendelson. He cut his teeth in New York City's flea markets and working as an art handler at the Brooklyn Museum. Then he turned into a chinamaniac, aesthetic gadfly and lifelong scribbler.
Shales combines hands-on knowledge and the psychological experience of fondling art with more conventional research methods ("pencil pushing," in the words of his students) to grapple with the absurdities and ironies of our domestic machines and aesthetic technologies. Pitchers of American Life: Art Within Reach condenses his lifelong learning and existential tailspins into a dosage half the price of whatever you've been prescribed.
Through an exploration of the tactile pleasures of drinking vessels, Pitchers of American Life: Art Within Reach traces the role of these objects as representative art and collective tools-episodes of American history that resonate today in our everyday lives and yearnings for sociability and communion. The discussion ranges from vessels within ancient cultures and religious and family rituals to the growth of mass production and contemporary consumer culture. Shales blends the social histories of art/artifacts with memories of working on a museum installation crew, as an educator and as a shopper. In each chapter he interprets a single object as a revealing time capsule.
Further information
- Location: Weiss Center for the Arts, Room 235
- Time: 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
- Cost: Free