The Burchfield Penney Art Center is presenting the 17th installment of its biennial exhibition, Art in Craft Media, which will run through March 2024. The exhibition is presented by the Sylvia L. Rosen Endowment for Fine Art in Craft Media and honors the legacy Rosen built as a ceramic artist in Buffalo.

The exhibit, curated by juror Peter Jones, includes hundreds of pieces made of a broad variety of materials by 75 artists.

“It’s the most diverse range of artists and art that you’ll see in our museum,” said Tullis Johnson, Manager of Exhibitions and Curator at the Burchfield Penney.

Jones, an Onondaga-Seneca artist, is known for his traditional Haudenosaunee pottery.

“Peter Jones is one of the great ceramic artists of Western New York,” said Johnson.

“His pottery is admired and collected by community members, Native American art collectors, and museums across the country and internationally,” according to the Burchfield Penney website.

With this exhibition, the Center hopes to expand the definition and bounds of “craft.” The medium is typically defined as those objects made of fiber, glass, wood, ceramic or metal.

“Instead of seeing these materials as the end of the conversation, we see them as a leaping-off point,” according to the Center’s website.

Johnson said the art of craft highlights the process of creating.

“It’s the details that really make it important, beautiful, and meaningful,” he said.

Rosen’s death in 2022 at the age of 102 made this year’s exhibit extra special.

“It is one of two exhibitions celebrating her legacy,” Johnson said. The other being “Gratitude,” which was presented last year.

Rosen worked as a ceramicist in Ohio until she moved to Buffalo with her husband in 1943. She helped to establish and taught at the Creative Craft Center at the University at Buffalo from 1963 to 1967.

Rosen later taught ceramics at Amherst Senior High School while earning a master’s in education from what was then Buffalo State College. In 1987, the Rosens established the Endowment for Fine Art in Craft Media which funded its first of many exhibitions at the Burchfield Penney in 1988.

Rosen was declared a Burchfield Penney Living Legacy artist in 2012.

“She saw that craft media was not necessarily respected the way it should have been,” Johnson said.

One, perhaps more, of the exhibited pieces will be selected for permanent display at the Art Center for $3000 in purchase awards. The Langley Kenzie Prize will also be awarded to one artist and includes a solo exhibition in the Burchfield Penney’s Sylvia L. Rosen Gallery. The Margaret E. Mead Endowment Award will also be presented to one of the featured artists.

The Burchfield Penney is open from Wednesday through Sundays. Admission is free for Buffalo State students and staff, and free for everyone on the M&T Bank-sponsored second Friday of each month.