Sarasota Art Museum Commissions Amalgam, a New Site-Specific Installation by Renowned Ceramic Artist and Designer Molly Hatch
Commissioned for Inside Out Series, Molly Hatch’s Amalgam Invites the Dialogue Between the Old and the New

SARASOTA, Fla. (May 28, 2024) – Renowned American ceramic artist and designer Molly Hatch’s latest work Amalgam is not just contemporary installation art but also an invitation to explore the dialogue between the old and the new, the intimate and the monumental. Hatch is best known for her large-scale wall installations of her hand-painted ceramic plates—what she calls “plate paintings.” For nearly 20 years she has worked to merge the distinctive look of painterly surfaces with the physicality of ceramic forms. Drawing on her deep engagement with the history of decorative arts and rigorous practice as a painter, she has interrogated the meaning of inherited objects in our lives, by defamiliarizing traditional patterns and motifs and scaling such traditional designs up in large-scale installations that border on abstraction. Her work prompts viewers to explore the subtle, yet unexpected threads that connect various cultures across the globe and historical epochs.
Hatch’s latest “plate painting,” Amalgam (2023), commissioned by Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design, opened in April and runs until April 2026. It is created specifically for the Museum’s Jan Schmidt Loggia and Mark & Irene Kauffman Arcade. Spanning two floors and consisting of more than 480 earthenware plates hand-painted in white, blue, and gold luster, Amalgam is conceived as one ensemble framed by the four arched windows. Hatch also plays with the empty spaces, so that viewers perceive lines and patterns between plates adjacent to each other. The whole composition may also be experienced from multiple points of view, from near and far, inside and outside of the Museum.
The patterns and motifs deployed in Hatch’s plates in Amalgam are drawn from historical ceramics, such as 15th-century Chinese Ming-dynasty Hanap drinking vessels, 19th-century Moroccan Fassi (from Fez) ware, 17th- and 18th-century Dutch Delft vases, 18th-century Mexican Talavera tile panels, and 19th- and 20th-century Japanese-inspired English ceramics designed by Christopher Dresser. By creating a cross-cultural bricolage of blue-and-white motifs ubiquitous in these ceramic wares, Hatch brings to the fore material and visual evidence of centuries-old global trade networks and the resultant shared aesthetics that connect us. It showcases Hatch’s unique ability to blend, deconstruct, and recontextualize traditional decorative arts and painting into something entirely new and striking.
As Hatch scales and transforms these familiar patterns, she invites a reflective engagement with her work, making ancient motifs relevant in a modern context; she compels us to look at the Museum’s brick buildings and neo-Gothic window frames with fresh eyes, as well as the everyday objects that surround us. In recent years, Hatch has come to understand that much of her motivation in her artistic practice comes from a feminist angle. She is not only exploring history, but specifically Art History, which has historically been a male dominated field in many ways. By working with a craft material such as ceramics that has been devalued by the art world and categorized as “women’s work,” she seeks to reclaim a place for ceramics and for women in the art historical canon. Hatch asserts her place as a woman in history by reinterpreting and asking viewers to rethink their relationships with imagery and objects.
“I think I have always sought to find a place for myself as a woman in the story of art, and my work has become a way of doing so,” said Hatch.
Molly Hatch’s Amalgam was commissioned as part of Sarasota Art Museum’s Inside Out exhibition program. Inside Out was created to give contemporary artists from around the world a space to share thought-provoking work outside of the gallery setting, in order to spark new conversations about art and ideas amongst museumgoers of all ages and backgrounds.
“Amalgam builds on our tradition of inviting contemporary artists to make new work in dialogue with Sarasota Art Museum’s iconic architecture,” said Virginia Shearer, Director of Sarasota Art Museum. “We look forward to welcoming visitors of all ages to marvel at this unique outdoor installation.”
Hatch’s work has been exhibited internationally with permanent installations in many museums, including Psychic Garden (2014) at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia and Repertoire (2017) at the Newark Museum of Art in Newark, New Jersey. In 2023, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Canada commissioned and acquired her work, Ducere, and she received commissions for new installations for the Tiffany & Co. Manhattan flagship store, The Landmark, and Tiffany stores in Dubai and Taipei. Hatch lives and works in Florence, Massachusetts.
Commissioned as part of Sarasota Art Museum’s Inside Out exhibition program, Molly Hatch’s Amalgam is made possible, in part, with generous support from Jane and Phillip Humann, Donna Pickup, Cowles Charitable Trust, Edward and Elizabeth Gardner Foundation Trust, Mark and Irene Kauffman, Roxanne Permesly, and Sarasota County Tourist Development Tax.
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