PETER HELD
On-Site Liaison (2008-2009)
Arizona State University,
Ceramics Research Center
ASU Art Museum
P.O. Box 872911
Tempe, AZ 85287
Peter Held received his bachelor’s degree in studio art with an emphasis on ceramics from the State University of New York, Brockport. Upon graduation, he moved to Helena, Montana to become a resident artist at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts. He later completed a master’s degree in museum administration at Oregon State University and interned at the Portland Art Museum in the Asian Art Department.
Held returned to Helena in 1994 to serve as executive director and curator of the Holter Museum of Art, where he helped successfully lead a $2.3 million capital and endowment campaign.
Since 2003, Held has been curator of ceramics at the ASU Art Museum Ceramics Research Center at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. He also serves as a trustee for the American Craft Council and is chair of its development committee.
Held has curated more than 75 exhibitions since 1989, including seven traveling ceramic shows: Ashen Beauty: Woodfired Ceramics; David Shaner: A Potter’s Work, 1963-1993; Sisters of the Earth: Native American Ceramics; A Ceramic Continuum: Fifty Years of the Archie Bray Influence; Between Clouds of Memory: Akio Takamori, A Mid-Career Survey; Eden Revisited: The Ceramic Art of Kurt Weiser and Innovation and Change: Great Ceramics from the ASU Art Museum Collection.
Held has authored numerous articles on contemporary art and crafts, and is the editor and essayist of the books A Ceramic Continuum: Fifty Years of the Archie Bray Influence and Between Clouds of Memory: Akio Takamori, A Mid-Career Survey; Eden Revisited: The Ceramic Art of Kurt Weiser and Following the Rhythms of Life: The Ceramic Art of David Shaner.
In 2007, The ASU Art Museum Ceramics Research Center and Held received the annual Ceramic Lifetime Achievement of the Year award from the Friends of Contemporary Ceramics.