Ezra Shales

Ezra Shales served as a Center exhibitions panelist in 2012 and a Pew Fellowships panelist in 2010. He is an art historian, curator, and artist whose research, publications, and exhibitions explore the intersections of design, craft, and art in modern and contemporary culture. A professor at Alfred University, he recently wrote Made in Newark: Cultivating Industrial Arts and Civic Identity in the Progressive Era (2010), which analyzes art as an expression of civic ideals. In 2011, he co-curated Raw Goods: The Transformation of Material by Local Industries, in which half-finished artifacts of glass, metal, and ceramic were pulled from the factories of Western New York in order to assess the idea of industrial craft and the hand (manu) in manufacture. Shales' writings have been published in the Journal of Design History, Journal of Modern Craft, Design & Culture, The Studio Potter, Fine Art Connoisseur, and American Craft. Before joining the faculty at Alfred University, he served as director of education at the Katonah Museum of Art, and supervised art education in New York City public schools. He has exhibited his own work at the Brooklyn Museum, P.S. 1, Art in General, and Artists Space.