Past Exhibitions 2026
Kathy Butterly: Assume Yes
Clever. Mischievous. Seductive. Defiant. For over three decades, Kathy Butterly has captivated viewers with her experimental and expressive ceramic sculptures. Her signature small-scale porcelain and earthenware works spring to life with an outsize range of moods expertly expressed in a wide array of textures, colors, and techniques. Every detail of a Butterly sculpture, from pools of orange glaze to pearlescent beads of clay, is an essential part of its composition.
Kathy Butterly: Assume Yes, a major retrospective exhibition of Butterly’s work, debuts at the Tang in 2026 as part of the museum’s 25th anniversary program. Accompanied by the publication of a major monograph, the exhibition features forty-five artworks spanning over thirty years, from early sculptures dating to 1994 to a selection of brand-new work on view for the first time.
Scale is critical to Butterly. It’s not about the actual size of the piece. Finding the right scale as well as the right color sets the piece apart. It becomes monumental and metaphorical, almost a vision of itself—little but big.
— Elena SistoContinuity is one of the most striking aspects of Butterly’s practice. Experienced en masse, her sculptures give the impression of a single river, containing countless currents within itself yet always flowing forward; or of a musical composition, complete with phrasing, harmonics, rhythm, and dynamics.
— Glenn AdamsonThe reliance on basic forms is not new in Butterly’s work, but her focus on circles and squares—the shapes with which each sculpture begins—is a departure, and permits unlocking an infinite range of emotions from seemingly fixed quantities. As she puts it, the question becomes, “how do you get a square to feel,” thereby making the “bottom” as important as the vessel—the “top”—it supports.
— Nancy Princenthal