Racine Art Museum - The Collection

The Collection

Growing out of a small collection of 300 pieces of 1930s art from the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project, the museum began to concentrate its efforts on acquiring works on paper by artists with regional and national reputations. In 1989, a second focus in contemporary crafts was established. Since then, an impressive collection of ceramics, fibers, glass, metals and wood from nationally and internationally recognized artists has been assembled. RAM now possesses one of the largest collections of contemporary crafts of any North American museum, including large collections of contemporary teapots, baskets and artist-made jewelry. RAM’s permanent collection features more than 4,000 artworks from internationally recognized artists such as: Dale Chihuly, Tim Lowly, Joel Philip Myers, Toshiko Takaezu, Wendell Castle, Arline Fisch and Albert Paley.

Ceramics: The museum’s ceramics collection numbers over 600 objects that include internationally known ceramic sculptors such as Rudy Autio, Richard DeVore, Adrian Saxe, Akio Takamori, Toshiko Takaezu, and Robert Turner. The museum also has one of the largest ceramic teapot collections in the United States, a donation from collector Donna Moog. The collection encompasses over 300 ceramic teapots that span from the 1950s through the 1990s.

Glass: The glass collection contains works from artists Harvey Littleton, Dale Chihuly, Joel Philip Meyers, Dan Dailey, Steven Hodder and Judy Jensen. Most of the works in the glass collection are sculptural rather than functional.

Metals: The museum’s collection includes one of the largest groupings of contemporary jewelry of any art museum. The collection includes artists Robert Ebendorf, Arline Fisch, Eleanor Moty, Earl Pardon, Susan Kingsley, Ken Loeber, Albert Paley, Kevin O'Dwyer, Fred Fenster and Chunghi Choo.

Wood: The museum’s wood collection consists of vessels, as well as furniture. One of the highlights of the collection is a Wendell Castle desk that was in Objects USA. Other artists include Mark Lindquist, Gary Knox Bennett, George Nakashima, Jere Osgood, Dennis Elliott, David Ellsworth, John Cederquist, Thomas Hucker, and Michele Holzapfel.

Handmade Books: The museum owns a large number of handmade books, both hand-printed letterpress examples and larger editioned offset lithography works. The collection includes work from Scott McCarney, Patti Tyrol, Erica Von Horn, Don Celender, Dikko Frost, JoAnna Poehlmann, Jim Lee and Bonnie O’Connell. Donations from groups such as Printed Matter, and the Friends of Typography in Madison, Wisconsin have allowed the museum’s handmade book collection to flourish, becoming one of the largest collections of its kind in a Midwestern art museum.