Syd Carpenter: Planting in Place, Time, and Memory

Woodmere Art Museum

Pew Fellow Syd Carpenter, 3 Mother Pins on a Vine, 2021; Clay, mixed media, 18" x 37" x 26". Photo courtesy of the artist. — Pew Fellow Syd Carpenter, *3 Mother Pins on a Vine*, 2021; Clay, mixed media, 18" x 37" x 26". Photo courtesy of the artist.

A clay sculpture covered in brown glaze by Pew Fellow Syd Carpenter. — Syd Carpenter, *Everelena Cannon*, 2009; clay, acrylic, and graphite, 41” x 35 ¾” x 23 ¾”. Courtesy of Woodmere Art Museum.

Recipient

Grant Year 2023

Grant Amount $300,500

Status Forthcoming

Updated April 28, 2025

A multi-site retrospective for ceramic artist and Pew Fellow Syd Carpenter spans her five-decade career with a comprehensive exhibition at Woodmere Art Museum. As well, the project includes installations at the Maguire Art Museum at Saint Joseph’s University, which showcases Carpenter’s large freestanding sculptures and early figurative work, and the Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, which hosts a barn installation with sculptures, video, and projected images currently being created for the Smithsonian. The exhibition centers on four themes in Carpenter’s work: historical Black American land practices, farming iconography, clay as a metaphor for collective memory, and a broader mutually supportive community of Black women ceramic artists.

The total grant amount represents project funding plus an additional 20% in unrestricted general operating support.

Primary EventsEvents & Exhibitions

Planting in Place, Time, and Memory Exhibition

Jan 23–May 17, 2026
Woodmere Art Museum
9201 Germantown Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19118

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Recipient

Woodmere Art Museum

Woodmere Art Museum centers the art and artists of Philadelphia in exhibitions that explore the achievements and social ideas of Philadelphia’s artists in the broader context of American art. The museum's permanent collection began with a gift from Charles Knox Smith, who purchased the estate in 1898 and transformed his home into a showcase for his collection of Philadelphia and Hudson River paintings, which make up the core of the museum's collection today.

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