Download - Inner City
Arnie Zimmerman, Sculptor | Tiago Montepegado, Architect
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design
September 26, 2009 – January 3, 2010
Judith Tannenbaum, Curator
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5 Foreword
7 Introduction
12 Interviews
24 Inner City 2009 Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence
30 Inner City 2008 Keramiekmuseum Princessehof, Leeuwarden, the Netherlands
34 Inner City 2007 Museu da Electricidade, Lisbon, Portugal
38 Biographies
44 Credits
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Watching the transformation of the Chace Center
Gallery into a city of bridges, factories, smokestacks,
laborers, and abstracted but humanized architectural
forms has been a magical experience. Architect
Tiago Montepegado and ceramist Arnie Zimmerman,
creators of Inner City, built from the elegant simplicity
of Rafael Moneo’s architecture to impart the energy
and gritty vitality of the urban environment, leading
us up ramps and through a grid of “streets” toward
a window onto our own beautiful city. The artists
have ensured that the creative process of installation
continues as a process of discovery for visitors,
especially once they begin to take notice of the darkly
whimsical figures. These tiny workers, sentenced to
labor as cogs in the great building machine, have
become malicious and destructive souls. They brawl,
fall down chimneys, carry heavy beams Sisyphus-like
to nowhere, lounge on the job, and shuffle in chains as
inmates. This grim view of the next phase of urban life
raises timely questions as we ponder how to free the
city from overdependence on fossil fuels and the social
stratification caused by economic downturn.
Zimmerman joins a small but distinguished roster
of ceramic sculptors whose work has been highlighted
at the Museum in recent years. Peter Voulkos, Ken
Price, Robert Arneson, and Betty Woodman each
found new expressive possibilities for the medium from
entirely different impulses. Zimmerman brings us a
hand-made realism that is not only approachable and
Foreword
Ann S. Woolsey, Interim Director
appealing but expressive and powerful. His work with
Montepegado took form previously at the Museu da
Electricidade for the Lisbon Architecture Triennial
(organized by Ana Viegas, Galeria Ratton, Lisbon) and
at the Keramiekmuseum Princessehof, Leeuwarden.
We are truly grateful for the support provided to
Inner City by the Providence Tourism Council, Friends
of Contemporary Ceramics (led by Linda Schlenger),
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and the Ministry
of Culture/Directorate-General for the Arts, Portugal.
The artists have been magnificent collaborators,
not only with each other but with the Museum staff
in creating this unique exhibition for RISD, especially
Tara Emsley, registrar; Zeljka Himbele, curatorial
assistant; Derek Schusterbauer, graphic designer;
and the Museum’s manager of installation, Stephen
Wing, and his team: Laura Ostrander, Michael Owen,
and Brian McNamara. Hope Alswang, former RISD
Museum director; Suzanne Fortier, director of develop-
ment; and Matthew Montgomery, director of marketing
and communications, were instrumental in securing
funding. Judith Tannenbaum, Richard Brown Baker
curator of contemporary art, oversaw the entire project,
from its inception to this informative publication.
Many thanks to her for her extra ordinary vision and
persistence in shaping this exhibition. And finally,
we are indebted to the artists, Arnie Zimmerman and
Tiago Montepegado, for creating an indelible image
of the city in the Chace Center Gallery.
Inner City 2009Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design
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Inner City is an epic narrative of urban growth, decay, change, and life itself, told in clay by Arnie Zimmerman (American, b. 1954). Currently comprised of nearly 200 figurative and architectural glazed stoneware parts, the installation’s over-all scale and form are variable — adapted to the exhibition site by architect Tiago Montepegado (Portuguese, b. 1970). No matter how they are assembled, Inner City’s diminutive tenements, skyscrapers, scaffolding, and construction-worker figures evoke a playful, mythical world. A closer look, however, reveals signs of something amiss, as workers brawl or tumble down I-beam shafts and dumpsters overflow. Indeed, Zimmer-man’s vision is an ominous one, a cautionary tale about urban corporatization, gentrification, and our waning connection to history in general and in the everyday. Zimmerman has lived and worked in New York City for more than 25 years, observing its streetscape with a mix of awe and regret as it has changed into a different environment — something he says is “more civil and benign, more bland and
Introduction
Judith Tannenbaum, Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art
Inner City 2008Keramiekmuseum Princessehof, Leeuwarden
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corporate.” This profound transformation of neighborhoods and their architecture is not limited to New York or to the turn of the millennium. Buildings have been continually razed and buried in the process of creating more modern cities and new cultural landscapes; however, the global building boom of the past decade or so seems to have transformed the urban way of life everywhere and at once. That this boom has now gone bust — or at least has been put on hold — amid the current worldwide economic downturn puts another twist in Zimmer-man’s civic allegory. When, a viewer of Inner City might ask, will all of this “progress” end? Like the densely populated paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Flemish, ca. 1525–69), Inner City illustrates myriad details of daily life. It also suggests the glory and the suffer-ing of manual labor and perhaps provides a metaphor for the heroism or folly of craftsmanship and creation itself. Zimmer-man’s figures represent working-class characters toiling with-out modern technology. There is something timeless about them, something that poses the eternal question: Are we des-tined to be doomed to endless Sisyphean tasks, or is there such a thing as decisive achievement and evolution? In this, Zimmerman’s work shares a lineage with paintings as diverse as those of Hieronymus Bosch (Dutch, ca. 1450–1516), with their bleak portrayal of human foibles, to Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889–1975), with whom he shares a distinctively sinewy sculptural style, and WPA artists and photographers of the New Deal, a policy that aimed to lift the United States out
Inner City 2007Museu da Electricidade, Lisbon
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of the Depression and rebuild it. That all of this is rendered in clay — a medium as durably eternal as it is fragile — makes Inner City all the more poignant as a symbol of the ever-present and ever-changing city, whose very existence shifts with its physical infrastructure, social evolution, and economic forces. The RISD Museum, the first venue for Inner City in the United States, is presenting the largest version of the project to date. In 2007, it was shown at the Museu da Electricidade, housed in a former power station, as part of the Lisbon Archi-tecture Triennial. In 2008, it was shown at the Princessehof Museum, Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. Each installation was unique and responsive to its site. In Lisbon, Montepegado built interior walls and pedestals out of concrete blocks, a material and form that responded to the vast industrial building that houses the Electricity Museum. In the Netherlands, scaffold-ing and walkways suggested a typical construction site (the sculptural objects were arranged at angles to each other, in an orthogonal grid), dramatically transforming the neutral white cube of the museum gallery. In both previous iterations, which consisted of approximately 120 components, Montepegado’s prosaic materials and architectural plans emphasized the interplay between the magnitude of the gallery space and the compactness of the sculptural components. The modes of dis-play enhanced the spatial experience of the ceramic sculpture, inviting viewers to move through it as if through a real city, capturing its narrative from a variety of perspectives and thus illuminating its metaphoric power.
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Arnie Zimmermanwith Judith Tannenbaum
JT: You became known in the 1980s for very large
carved vessels. Can you talk a little about that
work and how you switched to smaller figurative
pieces, which you have continued to develop
to the present?
AZ: Large ceramic pots and container forms always
interested me as a student, and I tended to make
oversized pottery. This is a problem when your stated
goal is to make functional and utilitarian pots. When
I was in college, I spent a few summers carving
monumental blocks of limestone in the south of
France. In grad school and afterwards, I began to
combine these two ways of working. I built very large
thick-walled hollow pottery forms. When the clay
became leather hard, I carved the surface, giving it
the appearance of worked stone. With this work I took
a path away from wheel-thrown functional pottery
to sculpture. I chose to keep with me a visual vocab-
ulary and craft-based working method using clay and
firing. The large forms always had architectural and
figurative references. Over the years of exploring these
forms I finally turned to embrace the challenge of
making a “person” or figure. I should say that I spent
very little time as an art student drawing or sculpting
the figure.
What continues to attract you to the figure?
The human and animal figure is one of the premier
vehicles for expression in art. I love art that uses the
body and depicts these forms. I’m not sure if I really
am attracted to the making of figures. It’s difficult for
me to breathe life into these things. I have no formal
training in anatomy, I haven’t practiced figure drawing
and modeling, and I find it very difficult to make
a portrait of another person. I feel ambivalence and
reluctance when I try to increase the size of the figure.
I feel more exposed, more vulnerable to criticism. So
far, I feel it’s luck when I look at a little person I’ve
created and perceive a distinct personality there.
Training and practice can get you a long way, and the
willingness to trust my instincts and impulses is what
drives the work with the figures. I think of two quota-
tions from William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell: “If the
fool would persist in his folly he would become wise”
and “Improvement makes strait roads; but the crooked
roads without improvement are roads of genius.”
How do you see your work in relation to other ceramic
figurines? For example, The RISD Museum has an
extensive collection of porcelain figurines including
Meissen, Royal Derby, and so on. Can you talk a
little about the conceptual and technical similarities
or differences to this tradition?
What’s curious to me is the direct influence of the
ceramic figurine on the work of the past seven or eight
Interviews
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years. I used to hate that aspect of the historical
ceramic tradition: the silly, elitist, purely decorative
genre of the “figurine” exemplified by Meissen was
the last thing I thought would ever interest me when
I was starting out 35 years ago. The porcelain-figurine
tradition and genre were not valued by my teachers
and my colleagues. When I was a student I was
enamored with traditions of folk pottery from all
cultures around the globe. What caught my attention
then were the Haniwa figures from Japan and Han
and Tang dynasty ceramic figures and animals and
the beautiful flowing lead-based tri-color glaze used
on them. I now deeply admire both Asian and Euro-
pean porcelain figurines for their artistry and consum-
mate craftsmanship. From a social point of view,
the subject matter and content of European figurines
is fascinating. I’d like to learn more about them. I
have read The Arcanum, a wonderful book about the
invention of European porcelain, but I have not delved
into this subject in a scholarly way. I don’t make my
“little people” the way it’s done in royal porcelain
manu factories: I don’t use porcelain very often, and
I fire everyone in a salt kiln.
It seems to me that your work is deliberately rougher,
allowing for accidents in the firing.
Yes, my aesthetic is very different from the royalty
who collected porcelain in the 18th century. The way
I work with clay would have been anathema to the
artists of the 18th century trying to please their royal
patrons. I do like firing accidents and imperfections
that show the hand in the process of the craft. It
has always been a characteristic of my work. I use
the ceramic figurine as a foil for depicting monumental
scale. The roughness of the clay and the burned-out
colors dripping over the figures are in direct contrast
to the “perfection” of royal porcelain. This so-called
coarseness heightens the character of the types of
humanity in Inner City. My “godly” hands are making
this diminutive humanity. They are the workers,
low-lifes — generic people. Stretching the metaphor,
my people are the badly made ones, the cast-offs,
the losers. This is not to say that I don’t love the
perfection of the white porcelain and the brilliant
glazes used by the 18th-century figurine makers,
and marvel at their abilities to make in some cases
sublime works of art.
You seem to represent the daily activities and trials
of “everyman” that suggests a connection to Northern
European artists such as Bosch, Bruegel, and Ensor.
Have you looked at their work specifically?
My sympathies are with the various working classes
and the abject poor. My parents were and are left-wing
progressives who grew up poor in the 1920s and
’30s in Brooklyn. In their early years, they were in the
socialist party and deeply committed to changing
for the better the social and economic conditions for
Meissen Porcelain Factory, The Monkey Band (Affenkapelle) (detail), ca. 1749. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.Bequest of Miss Lucy T. Aldrich.
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the lower economic strata of American society. I grew
up in the 1950s and ’60s, and the influence of that
time cannot be underestimated for me. I’m from
well-educated middle-class privilege, but I have the
gnawing feeling it could all disappear in an instant.
I grew up with a strong awareness of the battle against
social injustice, imperialist war, the military-industrial
complex, and overarching dominance of corporate
America stealing our rights as citizens in a democracy.
Yes, I love Bruegel for his acute sympathy and
depiction of the “everyman,” and the way these artists
skewered the bourgeoisie and aristocracy. Bosch
and Ensor are favorites, as well as Daumier, Picasso,
Klee, Guston, Paula Rego, all the great Italian Quat-
trocento and Cinquecento artists . . . it’s an endless
list. I look directly at their work and take what I need.
In general, what inspires me about these great artists
is their ability to suck you into the worlds they make
with paint or wood or bronze or stone or clay. Standing
in front of The Temptation of St. Anthony by Bosch
in the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon is
as engrossing an experience as one could find.
I have always looked at the history of ceramics
as well; this is a touchstone for me. All of human
experience can be found in the history of ceramics,
conveyed through pottery, painting on pottery, and
sculptural form — whether abstract or figurative, and
through many fascinating utilitarian objects. The
well is deep.
Photography is also an important influence for
my work. Atget, Evans, Abbott, Burckhardt, Cartier-
Bresson, Levitt, Davidson, Brady, Riis, Salgado,
the great Paul Strand (and his movie about New
York, Manhatta), Andreas Feininger. They are
all telling visual stories about people in the city,
or sometimes making images of the city that reflect
the human story.
How did you come to collaborate with Tiago Monte-
pegado, who designed the installation for your
sculpture? What do you think he brings to the project?
How did the idea for Inner City develop?
I’ve known Tiago since he was a teenager. He’s now
a practicing architect and also works doing special
projects with Galeria Ratton, Lisbon, where I’ve been
showing my work and doing projects for the last 20
years. Tiago brings sensitivity, creativity, rationality,
and both the architect’s “eye” and rigorous training to
our collaboration.
The idea for Inner City was born after Monte pe-
gado designed a base for a group of figures I was
showing at Galeria Ratton in 2005. With a few
simple grooved lines inscribed in its surface, the base
suggested an architectural setting — a plaza, a built
environment. This base made me realize that I wanted
to push the narrative with the small figures into a
context that confronts the viewer the way architecture
does. I later asked Tiago if he would be willing to
James Ensor, La Mort Poursuivant le Troupeau des Humains (Death Chasing the Flock of Mortals), 1896. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.Anonymous gift.
Walker Evans, Two Men in Front of Fuel Tank, Lower East Side, New York, 1934. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. Gift of James Dow. © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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collaborate on an amplification of what had happened
in that exhibition, The Burdened Fool and Other Stories.
What is the nature of your collaboration?
We work together as equals. In our collaboration, Tiago
serves as master city planner to my role as the creator
of little people, buildings, and other objects. Tiago
contemplates the space we have to use with the goal
of altering the viewer’s experience of that space.
The collaboration starts out as parallel play. Then we
mix our disciplines together and present the result
to the public. When I work with Tiago, I think about
the objects I have made and bring them to the gallery
as “stuff” — raw material, like wood or cement blocks.
In this case my “stuff” is somewhat peculiar-looking
compared to an ordinary two-by-four, for example,
and more valuable; yet its form remains constant from
exhibition to exhibition.
All in all, the objects — be they ceramic sculptures
or prosaic building materials — are parts of a greater
whole. Tiago does his thing: draws, thinks, designs,
mentally fashions all these “parts” into a blueprint
of the Inner City plan. Tiago and I go to the museum
or exhibition space after his alterations to the space
have been carried out. Together we experience this
new terrain and “build” the city by installing all
the ceramic parts together. We never do the same
thing twice, and the plan is always a little bit open
for last-minute changes.
Until 2005, I didn’t think in terms of “installation
art,” which involves the physical intervention or
manipulation of an entire room or space. I’m essen-
tially an object-maker engrossed in expressing myself
in what is a singular and somewhat peculiar way,
in this particular day and age. I realized that architects
are by definition “installation artists”; they work
with the space we physically exist in, and through a
rigorous design/thought process or their practice they
manipulate materials, think about the human experi-
ence and the human condition, and contribute a great
deal to the success or failure of the built environment
in which we live.
Where did you get the ideas for particular figures or
groups of figures in Inner City?
Some of the figures come from people I’ve noticed
on the streets or in the subways; an obvious example
is the figure pushing a shopping cart full of sacks.
I see people on a daily basis in Lower Manhattan
pushing around one or more shopping carts filled with
stuff. I always see many different scenarios of work
being performed on the streets: all types of building
construction, window cleaning, garbage collection,
people going down through manholes to work under
the street, etc. I also get ideas from the newspaper,
or from books I read about the history of New York.
An example is a book by Herbert Asbury, The Gangs
of New York, which was used by Martin Scorsese to
Arnie Zimmerman, The Burdened Fool and Other Stories, Galeria Ratton, Lisbon, 2005. Base design by Tiago Montepegado. Photo courtesy of Galeria Ratton.
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make a movie with the same name — it gave me the
image of men brawling. In A Pickpocket’s Tale: The
Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York, Timothy
J. Gilfoyle describes in detail the technique of the
“lock-step” used at Sing-Sing Correctional Facility
to control groups of inmates. After reading this, I
made the group of figures in a chain gang. I have
encountered many strange or startling situations on
the streets that I remember or, if I was lucky, was
able to photograph. One of the most memorable was
9/11; I was six blocks from the World Trade Center
that morning and witnessed it first-hand.
How has that experience of 9/11 been incorporated
into Inner City?
What a coincidence to be answering this question on
9/11/09. The events of 9/11 have had a huge impact
on my work. Pure and simple, what I saw that morning
forever changed my view of life. Terror, random death,
massive destruction, and a profound sense of imper-
manence and fragility are what entered my work after
9/11. I turned to one of the most undesirable aspect
of ceramics — its physical fragility. I began to make
large structures that were nearly impossible to pick
up and load in the kiln without them falling apart. If
the piece withstood the loading then it had to survive
the firing process. Sometimes it did, sometimes it
didn’t. If it didn’t, I would reassemble it into a gro-
tesque facsimile of its original shape. There was a
metaphoric correspondence to 9/11 in this pushing
of the limits of the ceramic process. If my structures
survived the firing, it was a triumph of my — and
therefore man’s — mastery of the world. If my struc-
tures fell apart, it confirmed what I know to be true:
we are not masters; we are impermanent, massively
destructive, terribly fragile, subject to random death,
dreamers and builders.
I know that there have been a lot of recent changes
in the Williamsburg neighborhood, where your studio
is. How do the everyday experiences of living in New
York affect your work?
When I arrived in Williamsburg in 1982 and set up a
ceramics studio, it was a very run-down area, as was
much of Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan. A lot
of Williamsburg had a palpable feeling of neglect,
sadness, and depression; the neighborhood was at its
lowest ebb. It was dangerous at night, nowhere to go
to for young hipster artists to hang out. Of course old
and new immigrant groups lived out there, in between
the dying industrial buildings from the 19th and early
20th centuries. I was very aware of the feeling of the
history of the area, and I loved it. Having a studio
out there at that time was great. I got lots of free
building material from the street from dumpsters, from
factories going out of business and throwing away their
contents. It was a little like the fall of Rome, when
barbarian hordes built their hovels out of scavenged
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statuary and finely carved stone. Lots of people my
age and older remember NYC this way: abandoned,
forlorn, dangerous — an archeological site being sifted
through by a relatively small group of artists and
weirdos. Flash forward 25 years, and now Williams-
burg is a bedroom community for yuppies, hipsters,
and even very well-heeled people like bankers; the
ethnic working class is selling out or being forced out
by the new demographic. New condos are everywhere,
most factory buildings are either torn down or con-
verted to luxury loft living, and there are bars and
restaurants. At the same time, there is still an amazing
street life, and like most New Yorkers I spend a lot of
time walking on the street to get somewhere. I always
look at architecture. My eyes are always looking up at
buildings, taking in the endless variety of buildings.
You first showed Inner City at the architecture triennial
in Lisbon in 2007, and then in 2008 at the Keramiek-
museum Princessehof in the Netherlands. Can you
briefly describe how the presentation at RISD differs
from the previous iterations?
We had a fixed amount of work for the show in Lisbon
and Holland — about 120 objects in all. Tiago had polar
opposite spaces to work with: in Lisbon a huge space
in an old electricity-generating plant, and in Holland
a white-wall gallery in a jewel box of a museum. Tiago
came up with amazing solutions to make a bridge
between the narrative of the ceramic objects and the
spaces we had to work with. In Lisbon, he used
cement blocks to carve up the space into walls,
streets, passageways, and sitting areas, where the
viewer and the work could co-exist. The feeling was
vast and intimate, a modernist aesthetic meeting the
antiquated industrial past. In the Holland installation,
Tiago had the wonderful idea of using industrial
scaffold to fill the volume of the gallery space, wall
to wall and floor to ceiling. This choice of material
made a counterpoint to the refined museum atmo-
sphere as well as providing a dynamic armature in
which to display the ceramic objects. It also provided
the right context for the general themes of the sculp-
ture. I have added a great deal more objects to the
installation for RISD. I did a series in 2008 I call
Walled City for an exhibition at the Katonah Museum.
There I was offered more wall space than floor space,
so I created buildings and figures to be mounted
on the walls. The general theme of the work remained
the same.
The most recent components you made for Inner City
are architectural. You’ve added larger bridges and
buildings. How did this come about?
In 2009, I worked more on architectural forms, less
on the figure. My idea was that Inner City needed
some architectural diversity, more eclecticism,
reflecting the feeling of NYC as it is today. There are
larger structures in this group of work, curved forms,
Arnie Zimmerman, Walled City, in Conversations in Clay, Katonah Museum of Art, 2008. Photo by Cathy Carver.
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forms that reference Mesoamerican architecture, and
a large, detailed industrial bridge. I was inspired by a
trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, and a story I read in the Times
written by a depressed person who found joy and
inspiration in the beauty and different character in
each bridge that spans the Harlem River. Since I live
on an island called Manhattan, I use bridges all the
time. They are an intrinsic part of the infrastructure
and, of course, iconic symbols of power. For the new
installation at RISD, I made an industrial-type bridge
I call “R.I.O. Bridge.” I used red iron oxide to coat
the clay structure, which I then fired in the salt kiln
numerous times.
You’ve worked in England and in Portugal. Have those
experiences influenced your art?
I’ve also worked in Japan and France. It’s always a
transforming experience to work in different countries
and cultures. To answer the question fully would take
a lot of time. The short answer is that going out to
other places in the world causes me to think a lot
about where I’m from and where I live. I would not
have created Inner City if I hadn’t worked and lived in
Portugal. Awareness of the rich histories and cultures
of Europe, Africa, Asia finally makes me think that
New York City and the U.S. is a youngish society but
we do have a past, and I want to find out as much
as I can about it. This impulse to learn about the past
also pertains to things like my studio building, the
building I live in, the streets I use every day, the
bridges, and the rivers around NYC, the layout of the
streets, the building of the subways. It’s strange to
know other people occupied the spaces I am using
now, they lived their lives in the exact same spot
as me and I don’t know their names or anything about
them. My studio building was part of a larger factory
that started out making wire armature for crinoline
dresses in the 19th century; they went on to manufac-
ture wire rope and screens. For decades and decades
they ran three shifts a day, old people in the neighbor-
hood remember, but there isn’t one photo of the
people who worked there that I can find or what the
factory looked like inside. I’d like to know; I’d like
the next people who use my building or the space it
occupies to know about them, and me.
Tiago Montepegadowith Judith Tannenbaum
JT: How has the architecture of the large Chace
Gallery designed by Rafael Moneo affected your
installation design?
TM: In this project, before an exhibition space exists
physically, it exists conceptually. This makes conversa-
tions about the importance of the physical space
quite fascinating for me as an architect. Taken to the
Zimmerman’s Williamsburg studio building, ca. 1940. Studio building, 2009. Photo by Arnie Zimmerman.
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extreme, the physical space for Inner City can be
anywhere, in any part of the world. This has in fact
been the case. Put differently, this is an artistic
project in which conceptual aspects take precedence
over other ideas. Consequently, it is not an architec-
tural project.
For the exhibition in Lisbon, I wrote the following
as a basis for reflecting upon the project: “Inner City is
an installation assumed in real time, and it intends to
construct a territory of interrogations. It is a space
where the visitor becomes participant. . . . Inner City
can be seen as the construction of the limit itself from
where the city can be (re)constructed.” I quote this
passage to show how, before being presented with this
magnificent formal exhibition hall designed by Rafael
Moneo, Inner City already had its Place.
You might even say that the end result as it now
stands has nothing in common with the initial ideas
that I had after I saw the photographs that were
sent to me and I visited the Chace Gallery. At the
time, I was thinking of the netting used in building
and metal structures, but then it called for a totally
different approach.
How did you approach the RISD space?
Not only does the Chace Gallery have a considerable
amount of space, but the volume is also very interest-
ing. It is a formal exhibition space with white walls,
a white ceiling, and a dark floor. At first sight it is
normal, with no major surprises. But then, looking
more closely, one sees that in fact the flooring is so
thin that, via delicate archaeology work, it is possible
to make out a regular white mesh pattern from another
past or future moment of occupation. Solid white
forms emerge from the floor, revealing another
topography, and finally the past or future city emerges
and comes to life.
How did you come up with the idea of the viewing
platform?
Curiously, the idea that we might see the limits of
Inner City began in Lisbon, when we were finishing off
assembling the exhibition. It took root in Leeuwarden,
when we placed a few of Arnie’s objects amidst the
regular mesh of scaffolding, at a level below the
wooden walkway. The situation we have here is one of
topography, and the idea that rising up could provide
a better understanding became essential for me.
More generally, what are the challenges for you
of installing Arnie’s work? Is it, first, the scale of the
work?
In my view, Inner City is not an installation — it is a
deliberate transformation. The space that hosts it is
transformed in such a way that the conceptual Place
is able to exist. I find it much more interesting to
bring about a transformation — something dynamic —
with an idea, with a concept. By comparison, I see
Architectural rendering of Inner City, 2009.
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an installation as being considerably more static.
The concept of transformation is interesting
because it seems to me to be the kind of territory in
which questions can emerge. The idea of a timeless
Inner City arises naturally from my own reflections
about the world in which we live, and also from my
understanding of Arnie’s work. A close look at his
characters and his constructions makes it easy to
create a narrative that can have any time frame. Of
course scale is an essential element in all of this —
the right scale, if such exists, or perhaps the seem-
ingly right scale, which can produce the full range of
sensations and emotions in a given Place.
Moving from drawings to the project itself, my
involvement as an architect seeks to enhance the
existing relationship of scale. This begins with the
relationship between the sculptures, and within them
the constructions and characters, and then between
Zimmerman’s work, the human scale, and the space
in which everything is taking place. In each of these
incarnations, the route has been very different, but
the concept has always been constant.
Looking at Inner City at the Electricity Museum,
visitors were confronted by a space with overwhelming
power, a hall for producing energy with all of its
steel-built machinery ready to run, and they could
imagine themselves in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Then
comes a wall (Inner City) made of concrete blocks
whose scale creates a considerable pause — which is
at the same time serene — amidst all of that noise.
Visitors did not know when things originated: whether
the Inner City wall is the vestige of something from the
past, or alternatively, whether the wall is the start of
something new, given the imposing presence of
industrial architecture. It was as if they were witness-
ing a transformation, although they did not know in
which direction.
In Leeuwarden, Inner City gave rise to a consider-
able spatial transformation, because it filled the
entire interior of the Keramiekmuseum Princessehof’s
temporary exhibitions gallery. A tight square mesh
was designed with scaffolding, which is common
in construction, within which everything took place.
The sense of entering into a space within Inner City,
without clearly understanding whether you are
witnessing building or recent destruction, was pre-
cisely the idea behind the timelessness that I have
mentioned. And I must add that this was made
possible by dismantling the hall’s false ceiling.
Being daring sometimes has its reward, and in that
case I discovered a hidden skylight which shed a
new magical light onto Inner City.
Inner City, Lisbon, 2007. Photo by Arnie Zimmerman.
Inner City 2009Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design
24
Installed in the recently opened Chace Center, designed by Spanish architect
José Rafael Moneo, this incarnation of Inner City incorporates more than 30 new
pieces, including 2 bridges that are each 10 feet long, as well as approximately
60 pieces grouped together as Walled City, which was shown at the Katonah
Museum in 2008. Sprawled across a 4000-square-foot space, the exhibition
features a ramp designed by Montepegado with a 4-foot-high viewing platform,
where visitors can survey the panorama and appreciate the city’s narratives from
a variety of perspectives. The city itself is organized in a grid pattern across the
floor, punctuated by pedestals of differing heights which rise up from the ground
like buildings in a metropolis and a number of elements attached to the walls.
Inner City 2009Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design
Organized by Judith Tannenbaum,
Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art
25
26
27
Section view facing exhibition entrance (east wall).
Section view facing pedestals, wall-mounted sculpture, and ramp (north wall).
Floor plan showing ramp, pedestal locations, and grid pattern in Chace Gallery.
28
29
30
Inner City 2008Keramiekmuseum Princessehof, Leeuwarden
Organized by Ank Trumpie,
Curator of Modern and Contemporary Ceramics
The design of the Tuinzaal (Garden Hall) at the Princessehof suits the main theme
of the work itself — an expanding city. This spotless museum hall, another notorious
“white cube,” lends itself perfectly to being transfigured, even to being decon-
structed. The artists decided to use scaffolding, a common sight on any construc-
tion site which, because of its spatial construction, offers almost architectonic
possibilities. The objects are arranged in a grid — similar to a map of Zimmerman’s
living and working place in New York. He also used a grid during his working
process, ensuring that none of the objects were thicker than 13 centimetres,
resulting in a uniformity redolent of a map of Manhattan. The buildings are placed
in parallel or at angles to each other on the “city blocks.” The contrast between
New Yorkers’ powerful urge for individuality and the constraints of the city grid that
governs their movement through the city is another theme Zimmerman embraces
in this concept. . . . All sorts of things happen in this “expanding city.” Montepegado
tries to impose structure on the city while Zimmerman continues to expand it
unrestrainedly. In Montepegado’s words: “It is impossible for a designer to plan for
a city without limits and this installation can therefore be construed as the physical
manifestation of that limit.”
[Excerpt from Fredric Baas, “Inner City,” in Ceramics: Art and Perception 74 (2008), 46–50.]
31
32
Entrance with graphic signage. Navigation through construction on raised walkways.
Section view: wood walkway and platforms within scaffolding grid.
Section views: arched ceiling of Garden Hall. Floor plan with wood walkway.
33
34
The 2007 Lisbon Architecture Triennial gave American sculptor Arnie Zimmerman
and Portuguese architect Tiago Montepegado the chance to follow up on an earlier
installation created less than two years prior, when the young architect “installed”
an exhibition of ceramic figures sculpted by Zimmerman entitled The Burdened
Fool and Other Stories. It was at that moment that both artists felt the need to enter
into a deliberate collaboration, combining sculpted figures with architectural forms.
The result is the Inner City installation. It draws the utmost potential from the
unlikely combination of Zimmerman’s small sculptures and the huge cement-block
wall built by Montepegado to display them. The contrast could not have a greater
impact nor make greater sense: delicate sculptures and massive parallelepipeds
(or three-dimensional parallelograms); figurines full of movement and walls heavily
immobile, with the former multiple and varied and colorful and the latter uniform
and made of gray cement, recalling French poet Louis Aragon’s sad verse “Tout
avait la couleur uniforme du givre” (Everything had the unvarying color of frost).
The combination evokes a range of narratives whose uniting theme might be the
construction of the present day’s new cathedrals. That is how I saw it. Ultimately,
the artists display and visitors decide. Be that as it may, Montepegado has been
able to capture and return to Zimmerman some of his previous suggestions of
arches, monuments, and builders by means of a bare cement wall, which, as it
happens, functions as a critical metaphor for modern architecture — inhuman and
naked, oversized, transforming the small figures of builders into tiny dwarves.
However, the architectural mass unfolds to reveal variations on the wall theme —
here completely enclosed, partly open there — regular spaces maintaining commu-
nication between the worlds within and outside the wall. At the same time the
installation extends into the setting provided by the Electricity Museum, which
Inner City 2007Museu da Electricidade, Lisbon
Developed and produced by Ana Viegas,
Director, Galeria Ratton, Lisbon
35
36
Concrete block wall along which visitors entered the exhibition. Buildings and figures in context of large-scale electrical equipment.
Section view: concrete block wall with openings to reveal ceramics.
Floor plan: concrete block wall in context of large-scale electrical equipment.
37
makes the work’s scale more intimidating still. It not only adds to the size, but also
brings greater complexity, thus ensuring a surreal link between the past, present,
and future of the “inner city.”
Emerging from between the breaches in the wall are the varied activities of the
tiny figures, who are both prisoners and builders of their prison. Their echo can be
found in the museum’s evocation of the industrial activities that once took place
within the former Tagus Power Station. Remotely inspired by Chinese porcelain and
its 18th-century European replicas, Zimmerman’s figurines nevertheless irresistibly
evoke the medieval miniatures associated with the work and leisure of the builders
of cathedrals. And, amongst all this feverish building activity, do we not see a
subtle metaphor for property speculation — the “bubble” that is such a feature of
global post-modernism?
What is certain is that, as we round the western edge of the wall, which the
architect has smoothed with a discrete personal alteration to the cement-block
uniformity, the sculpted figures take full control of the installation and unfold into
countless “stories.” There is no room to give account of them here; each visitor will
make their own narratives.
Does this group of prisoners recall the hard manual labor of the immigrant? Is
that scene there an accident, and then another one, this time with a patient being
carried on a stretcher, recalling Goya’s The Wounded Mason? Next there are all
kinds of merrymaking, perhaps inspired by the wine in Zimmerman’s beautiful jars
and amphorae? Alternating with work are several moments of rest; even one that
seems like meditation. Could it be? Is that a group fighting or playing a game whose
rules we do not know? And then, could that be another group in mid-libation? And
there is more: two characters fight while two other little men, slightly further on,
search for something in the bins found in every “inner city.” Sustenance?
Towards the end there is a miniature with a green face and a dancing pose,
perhaps celebrating the placing of a final stone. Who knows? And to finish, a jocular,
imbibing group drawn from our cities’ medieval origins appears to be watched by
someone. Could it be the architect, reclining with his legs crossed, while the group
indulges itself in its celebrations? Whatever the case, it is one possible end to this
recurring contrast between the activity of the builders and the monotony of the wall,
and gives full sense of Arnie Zimmerman and Tiago Montepegado’s collaboration.
[Manuel Villaverde Cabral, “Cathedral Builders: Arnie Zimmerman and Tiago Montepegado
at the 2007 Lisbon Architecture Triennial.” Translated by Louis Keil. Reprinted by permission
of the author.]
38
Arnie Zimmerman
b. 1954, New York; lives and works
in New York City
Education
MFA, 1979, New York State College
of Ceramics, Alfred, NY
BFA, 1977, Kansas City Art Institute,
Kansas City, MO
Solo Exhibitions
2008
Inner City, Keramiekmuseum Princesse-
hof, Leeuwarden, the Netherlands
2007
Inner City, Museu da Electricidade,
Lisbon, Portugal
Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, Kansas
City, MO
2006
Daum Museum, Sedalia, MO
2005
Galeria Ratton, Lisbon, Portugal
2004
Parables of Folly, Greenwich House
Pottery, New York, NY
2001
John Elder Gallery, New York, NY
Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY
1999
John Elder Gallery, New York, NY
1996
Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, NY
Shaw Guido Gallery, Pontiac, MI
1994
Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten
Island, NY
Galeria Ratton, Lisbon, Portugal
Habitat-Shaw Gallery, Farmington Hills, MI
1992
Galeria Ratton, Lisbon, Portugal
Museu do Azulejo, Lisbon, Portugal
Habitat-Shaw Gallery, Farmington Hills, MI
1991
Garth Clark Gallery, New York, NY
1989
E. L. Stark Gallery, New York, NY
1988
Objects Gallery, Chicago, IL
1987
Objects Gallery, Chicago, IL
1985
Helen Drutt Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Objects Gallery, Chicago, IL
1984
Hadler Rodriguez Gallery, New York, NY
Selected Group Exhibitions
2008
Conversations in Clay, Katonah Museum
of Art, Katonah, NY (catalogue)
A Human Impulse: Figuration from the
Dianne and Sandy Besser Collection,
Arizona State University Art Museum,
Tempe, AZ
2006
The Bong Show, Leslie Tonkonow Artworks
+ Projects, New York, NY
The Figure in Context, The Clay Studio,
Philadelphia, PA
2005
A Tale to Tell, John Michael Kohler Art
Center, Sheboygan, WI (catalogue)
2004
Group Exhibition, Nancy Margolis Gallery,
New York, NY
2001
Between Thee and Me: Objects of Agency,
Scripps College 57th Ceramic Annual,
Claremont, CA (catalogue)
Inner Child, Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY
(catalogue)
1999
Clay Bodies, Neuberger Museum of Art,
Purchase, NY (catalogue)
1997
Inaugural Exhibition, John Elder Gallery,
New York, NY
Dorothy Weiss Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1995
New York, New York Clay, Rogaland
Kunstnersenter, Stavanger, Norway
39
Keepers of the Flame, Kemper Museum,
Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO
1994
Waves of Influence: cinco séculos do
azulejo português, Snug Harbor Cultural
Center, Staten Island, NY; Everson
Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Museum
of Art, Rhode Island School of Design,
Providence, RI (catalogue)
Reverence for Clay/Irreverence, Trans-
Hudson Gallery, Jersey City, NJ
Orgamorphic Form, Foster-Goldstrom
Gallery, New York, NY
1993
Ceramic National, Everson Museum of Art,
Syracuse, NY
The Legacy of the Archie Bray Foundation:
A Celebration of Ceramic Art 1952–1993,
Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, WA
1991
Outdoor Sculpture Festival, Snug Harbor
Cultural Center, Staten Island, NY
1990
Ceramic National, Everson Museum of Art,
Syracuse, NY
1989
Surface and Form, National Museum of
Ceramic Art, Baltimore, MD
Special Exhibition of Top Ceramic
Designers, Mino, Japan
American Clay Artists, Port of History
Museum and The Clay Studio,
Philadelphia, PA
Museu do Azulejo, Lisbon, Portugal
1988
Gulbenkian Foundation, Contemporary Art
Museum, Lisbon, Portugal
1987
Ceramic National, Everson Museum of Art,
Syracuse, NY
Clay Revisions, Seattle Art Museum,
Seattle, WA
Clay Feats, Snug Harbor Cultural Center,
Staten Island, NY
1986
Poetry of the Physical, American Craft
Museum, New York, NY
Contemporary Arts: An Expanding View,
Squibb Gallery, Princeton, NJ, and
Monmouth Museum of Art, Lincroft, NJ
Material and Metaphor, Chicago Cultural
Center of Fine Arts, IL
1984
House on the Borderline, White Columns,
New York, NY
RISD Clay Invitational, Museum of Art,
Rhode Island School of Design,
Providence, RI
1983
The Raw Edge: Ceramics of the Eighties,
Hillwood Art Gallery, Greenvale, NY
Ceramic Directions: A Contemporary
Overview, State University of New York,
Stony Brook
Scripps College 39th Ceramic Annual,
Long Art Gallery, Claremont, CA
1978
Young Americans: Clay, Museum of
Contemporary Crafts, New York, NY
Selected Permanent Collections American Craft Museum, New York, NY
Arizona State University Museum of Art,
Tempe, AZ
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Contemporary Art Center, Honolulu, HI
Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI
Dodson Insurance Company,
Kansas City, MO
Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY
Frost Art Museum, Miami, FL
Keramiekmuseum Princessehof,
Leeuwarden, the Netherlands
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC
Museum of Ceramic Art, Alfred, NY
Museum of Decorative Arts, Montreal,
Canada
Nacional Museu do Azulejo, Lisbon,
Portugal
Prudential Insurance Company,
Newark, NJ
Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park,
Shigaraki, Japan
Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Renwick Gallery, Washington, DC
World Ceramic Exposition Foundation,
Icheon, Korea
Yellowstone Art Center, Billings, MT
Selected Grants
2005
Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation,
fellowship
1999
New York Foundation for the Arts,
sculpture fellowship
1992
Arts International, Lila Wallace-Reader’s
Digest Fund International, artist grant for
residency in Portugal
1991, 1987
New York Foundation for the Arts,
fellowship
1990, 1986, 1982
National Endowment for the Arts,
fellowship
1990
E.S.C.A. Grant to New York State
Craft Artist
1990
American Embassy (Portugal),
travel grant
Selected Bibliography
Baas, Fredric. “Inner City: Arnie
Zimmerman and Tiago Montepegado.”
Ceramics: Art and Perception 74, 2008.
Del Vecchio, Mark. Postmodern Ceramics.
London: Thames & Hudson, 2001.
Koplos, Janet. “Arnold Zimmerman at
John Elder.” Art in America, May 2000.
Kuspit, Donald. Parables of Folly. New
York: Greenwich House Pottery, 2004.
Niederlander, Rebecca. “Between
Thee and Me: Objects of Agency.”
Claremont, CA: Scripps College, 2001.
Perreault, John. “Big Apple Clay.”
American Ceramics 14, no. 2 (2003).
40
Tiago Montepegado
b. 1970, Lisbon, Portugal; lives and
works in Lisbon
Education1995, Faculdade de Arquitectura da
Universidade Técnica, Lisbon
Architecture Projects (Portugal)
2008
Bartolomeu Cid dos Santos, Print and
Design Museum, Tavira
Houses for rural tourism, Marco de
Canaveses
Social facilities for young women, Tavira
2006
Single-family house, Restelo, Lisbon
Galeria Ratton, Lisbon
2005
Interpretive structure for archaeological
discovery, Casa de Corpo Santo, Setubal
2004
Competition (collaboration with João
Vieira), Museum of Art and Archeology
of Vale do Côa
2003
Casa Campião office, Faro
2002
Casa Campião office, Funchal, Ilha da
Madeira
Graça Morais artist studio, Lisbon
Competition (collaboration with Mariana
Viegas and Pedro Gomes), Cultural Art
Center, Odivelas
Apartment, Lisbon
2001
EuroD-Digidoc office, Oeiras
Competition, youth hostel, Portalegre
Cemetery, Santa Cruz, Madeira
Apartment, Rua Passos Manuel, Lisbon
2000
Competition, Human Sciences and Arts
Complex, Universidade de Évora
1998
Competition, military complex, Tavira
Apartment, Casa Jardim, Lisbon
Apartment, Bairro Alto, Lisbon
1996
Residential campaign headquarters for
Jorge Sampaio (collaboration with Manuel
Graça Dias and José Romano), Lisbon
Exhibition Installation and Graphic Design (Galeria Ratton, Lisbon, Portugal)
2008
Ana Sério: Shadow of the Mirror
Ana Hatherly: Art of the Suspended
Jun Shirasu: A Seed — Returned from
the East
2007
Teresa Ramos: Communicating Vessels
Bartolomeu dos Santos: Boxes of Memories
Françoise Schein: Movements of Living
2006
António Dacosta: Intimate Work
Graça Morais: Dialogues with the Earth
2005
Arnie Zimmerman: The Burdened Fool
and Other Stories
Betty Woodman
Artistic Collaborations
2008
Inner City, co-presented by Galeria Ratton
(Lisbon) and Keramiekmuseum Princesse-
hof, Leeuwarden, the Netherlands
2007
Inner City, presented by Galeria Ratton,
Museu da Electricidade, Lisbon Architec-
ture Triennial
Bibliography
“Revista Cubo” 002. Art and Architecture
(Portugal), 2007.
Sardo, Delfim. “Tijolo a Tijolo.”
Arquitectura e Vida (Portugal), 2007.
Vieira. Sílvia. Interview. Mais Arquitectura
(Portugal), 2007.
Rodeia, João Belo. “Inner City: A Wall
Inhabited.” Mais Arquitectura (Portugal),
2007.
Carvalho, Ricardo. “Palimpsest House
in Restelo.” Jornal Público–Mil Folhas
(Portugal), June 17, 2006.
I think of the figures and their actions and situations as exist-ing in the realm of dreams and metaphors. They are not meant to be read as allegories for the noble ideals of civilization; these people are the ones in our peripheral vision. This periph-ery is an important existential terrain in my work. Into it pours narratives from the observation of everyday life on the street, reading stories and seeing pictures of events in the news-papers. Memories of things I’ve done and experienced in the 30 years I’ve lived and worked in New York combined with the study of historical events also get mixed into these narrative paths. I have a recurring dream about walking down a familiar street in the city and suddenly seeing an alley unknown to me. I walk down the alley finding different people, architecture, undiscovered neighborhoods. . . . The feeling of wonder and displacement and longing, or saudade, for this other reality is what I’m after in this work. Knowing where you are but still being able to be surprised by where you are, discovering mean-ing in terrain you no longer notice on a daily basis. — Arnie Zimmerman, 2007
Inner City is an installation assumed in real time that fosters a territory of inquiry. A space where, upon entering, the visitor is compelled to participate. It is a group of parallels. They will never meet. They will never cross, creating a void that is occu-pied by all of us. There are no such cities. Or are all the cities like this? Is it true that we only see the others when we are at the window and look to the other side of the street? — Tiago Montepegado, 2007
42
43
All ceramic works are stoneware clay, glaze, and epoxy; 2006–09. They are on loan from Arnie Zimmerman.
Artist acknowledgments
Arnie Zimmerman Thank you to Judith Tannenbaum, the staff of The RISD Museum, Tiago Montepegado, Ana
Maria Viegas, Manuel da Costa Cabral, Howard Rosenthal, Patti Nelson, Lesley Day, Fumi Nakamura, Cara
O’Brien, Lindsay Gilberto, Ancil Farell, Chris Gustin and Nancy Train Smith, and my wife, Ann Rosenthal.
Tiago Montepegado Thank you to Fernando Rodrigues, Inês Matos, Carla Cerqueira, Catarina Botelho, Ana
Viegas, José Mateus, José Manuel dos Santos, Eduardo Moura, André Correia, Vera Pires Coelho, Dinís
da Silva, Clara Queiroz, Heitor Tender, Ank Trumpie, Fredric Baas, John Maeda, Ann Woolsey, James Hall,
Judith Tannenbaum, Zeljka Himbele, Brian McNamara, Laura Ostrander, Michael Owen, Stephen Wing, and,
especially, Inês Lobo.
Photo credits
Cover Inner City buildings and figures in Zimmerman’s studio; photo by Cathy Carver. Pages 2–3 Photos
of New York City buildings by Arnie Zimmerman; detail photography of Inner City by Arnie Zimmerman.
Pages 6 and 22–29 Photos of Inner City, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 2009, by Erik Gould.
Pages 8 and 31–33 Photos of Inner City, Keramiekmuseum Princessehof, Leeuwarden, 2008, by Erik & Petra
Hesmerg. Pages 10 and 35–36 Photos of Inner City, Museu da Electri cidade, Lisbon, 2007, by Catarina Botelho
(except page 36, upper left, by Tiago Montepegado). Pages 27, 32, 37 Architectural drawings by Tiago Monte-
pegado; © Tiago Montepegado. Pages 42–43 Photos of New York City buildings by Arnie Zimmerman; detail
photography of Inner City by Cathy Carver and Erik & Petra Hesmerg.
Edited by Amy Pickworth
Designed by Julie Fry
Printed by Meridian Printing
Typeset in Trade Gothic
Printed on Scheufelen Job Parilux Silk
ISBN 978-0-615-32566-8
Library of Congress Control Number 2009937980
Support for Inner City at The RISD Museum has been provided by the Providence Tourism Council,
Ministry of Culture/Directorate-General for the Arts, Portugal, and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, with
additional funding for the catalogue from Friends of Contemporary Ceramics and Howard A. Rosenthal.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Inner City: Arnie Zimmerman and Tiago Montepegado,
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, September 26, 2009 – January 3, 2010.
© 2009 Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design