Women, Art, and Social Change: The Newcomb Pottery Enterprise is the largest presentation of Newcomb arts and crafts in more than twenty-five years.

One of the most significant American art potteries of the twentieth century, Newcomb works are a graceful union of form and decoration inspired by the flora and fauna of the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. Each piece is one of a kind—and collectively they create a distinctive Southern art form.

In 1895, the Harriott Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, Tulane University’s women’s college, established Newcomb Pottery in New Orleans, and conceived it as part artist collective, part social experiment, and part business enterprise initiative under the auspices of an educational program. The art school faculty incorporated the philosophies and tenets of the English Arts and Crafts movement into their curriculum to teach Southern women self-reliance by way of an education and financial independence through the sale of their wares. The Pottery thrived until 1940.

Today these remarkable, distinctive art objects continue to be critically acclaimed and highly sought-after, and the Newcomb program is a rich mine for academic research. Women, Art, and Social Change: The Newcomb Pottery Enterprise showcases a striking collection of Newcomb pottery, metalwork, bookbinding, and textiles with new scholarship to explore the history of the pottery and its importance as a social and artistic experiment.

Women Art and Social Change: The Newcomb Pottery Enterprise is organized by the Newcomb Art Gallery at Tulane University and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. The exhibition is supported by grants from the Henry Luce Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, Artworks.