Date/Time
Date(s) - January 25, 2021 - June 20, 2021
9:00 am - 5:00 pm


There are things
We live among ‘and to see them
Is to know ourselves’.

-George Oppen, “Of Being Numerous”

This exhibition brings together a collection of objects either made by, or that lived in the orbit of Richard and Jan De Vore. Richard De Vore, a former Pottery Professor in the Department of Art and Art History, was one of the most prominent artists to have served on the faculty at Colorado State University. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, among many others. He was also a highly regarded educator, whose passionate and focused teaching transformed the lives of countless students. Several of the works in this show were once kept in the CSU Pottery Studio as a part of Devore’s “Teaching Collection,” a collection of exemplary objects woven into the daily activity teaching, learning and making. The exhibition also places De Vore’s own work in the context of his sources, showing the ways an artist is both informed by and continually re-making history. This sensibility, shared between Devore and the current pottery faculty – that contemporary studio practice thrives on the sustenance of history – weaves together the work of the studio with the work of the museum and reminds us that, if we can apprentice ourselves properly to the work of apprehension, objects themselves can become powerful teachers.

Sanam Emami and Del Harrow, Associate Professors of Pottery, Department of Art and Art History, Colorado State University.


The project is made possible in part through a grant from the Lilla B. Morgan Memorial Endowment, which works to enhance the cultural development and atmosphere for the arts at Colorado State University. This fund benefits from the generous support of all those who love the arts. Additional support  is provided by the FUNd Endowment at CSU. Museum operating support is generously provided by Colorado Creative Industries. CCI and its activities are made possible through an annual appropriation from the Colorado General Assembly and federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.