See ‘Recall. Reframe. Respond. The Art of Paul Scott’ at the Cincinnati Art Museum

Blue-and-white China may evoke memories of a grandmother’s cabinet or a dusty shelf in a thrift store, but when British artist Paul Scott reworks traditional transferware (a special kind of pottery design popularized in England during the mid-18th-century), the results are anything but nostalgic.

From Oct.10, through Jan. 4, the Cincinnati Art Museum presents “Recall. Reframe. Respond. The Art of Paul Scott,” an exhibition of more than 100 works that transform historic decorative arts into thought-provoking commentaries on contemporary life.

“He really uses and manipulates them to make them relevant, and in doing that, really makes the layering of meaning in the historical pieces evident, as well as the layers of meaning in his own work,” says Amy Dehan, curator of decorative arts and design at the Cincinnati Art Museum. “There’s a lot of close looking and thinking.”

Scott, an artist, author and educator based out of Cumbria in northwest England, has spent decades reimagining printed ceramics. He breaks, mends, engraves and collages antique wares to create new patterns.

Visitors to the exhibition will see Scott’s works accompanied by rarely displayed transferware pieces from the Cincinnati Art Museum’s permanent collection, some of which have been in storage for nearly 25 years. The exhibition also features prints, sculptures, photographs and paintings from the museum’s American art collection.

“I like creating these kinds of interventions because I think it shakes things up a little bit,” Dehan says. “[It] encourages people to think about what they’re looking at and what the artist’s intent was, and how artists of today can have these conversations — if you will — with artists of the past.”

The exhibition is organized in a way that introduces visitors to both the history of transferware and the contemporary themes in Scott’s work, such as climate change, human rights and place-making.

The show begins in the museum’s two special exhibition galleries located across from the museum cafe. Here, visitors can see some of Scott’s pieces before heading into the American and Cincinnati Wing galleries to see his works in dialogue with other pieces.

“Fukushima, No. 11,” from the series “Cumbrian Blue(s),” 2025, Paul Scott, Courtesy of Paul Scott and Ferrin Contemporary, © 2025 Paul Scott, Photo Credit: Chris Lewis

One piece, “Fukushima #11,” illustrates Scott’s layered storytelling. The work commemorates the 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan by fusing a traditional Willow pattern platter with Katsushika Hokusai’s iconic “Great Wave off Kanagawa.” Scott repaired the broken ceramic using kintsugi, the Japanese technique of mending pottery with gold.

“It’s part of this perspective that there’s value in mending, and it’s part of the story of the object,” Dehan says. “It’s so layered in so many ways.”

The exhibition also brings the surrounding community into the conversation. Scott collaborated with local artist Terence Hammonds (whose own artistic practice involves printed ceramics) to create two pieces that highlight the Queen City’s history and civil rights activists. Additionally, visitors will find reflections from community members written in response to Scott’s art.

Accessibility is another key element. Thanks to a partnership with the Clovernook Center for the Blind & Visually Impaired, “Recall. Reframe. Respond.” will be the museum’s first special exhibition to feature Braille labels.

Scott himself will visit Cincinnati for the opening, giving a public lecture at the museum on Oct. 9 at 6 p.m. For Dehan, the pairing of past and present and the conversations sparked along the way make the show especially timely.

“So much of his work is about the transmission of images from one form to another to democratize imagery,” Dehan says. “A lot of the images you see on historical transferware started out as a painting. ... This idea of the transfer of images and how people digest images is really interesting.”

953 Eden Park Dr., Cincinnati 45202, 513/721-2787, cincinnatiartmuseum.org

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