Sara Morris

Sara Morris has recently been selected to serve as the Ruth Rippon Curator of Ceramics at the Crocker Art Museum. Her duties include research into the collection, acquiring artworks for the Museum’s permanent collection, and organizing contemporary and historic ceramics exhibitions and publications. Morris’s curatorial objectives and scholarly values align with the Crocker’s commitment to collecting, preserving, and furthering scholarship on ceramic art.

Morris is currently a PhD candidate in the History of Art & Architecture Department with a doctoral emphasis in feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her dissertation, “Clay Bodies: Figurative Ceramics and the Crafting of Identity in Postwar Sculpture,” examines the methods postwar women artists pursued in figurative ceramics, pushing against the limits of the vessel tradition and Funk to render themselves and their communities visible on the West Coast.

Originally from Aptos, California, Morris’s material and regional interests stem from her dual training in art history and ceramic sculpture as an undergraduate, as well as her early curatorial experience as a Windgate Museum intern in the Decorative Arts & Design Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Morris notes, “I was lucky to study under ceramics professors and have mentors in my life who were incredible teachers. They shared their knowledge of ceramics and studio craft with me, areas often overlooked in canonical narratives of art.”

Morris holds an MA in art history and visual culture from San Jose State University (2017), where she also received her BA in art history with a minor in studio art.