Clay Times Back Issues Vol. 4 Issue 14 • Jan/Feb 1998 | Page 18

CERAMIC MILLENIUM

Amsterdam ’99

An interview with Garth Clark about what might be the
grandest (and last) big clay event of the century...

(CB) Garth, I’ve been asked to
interview you, and it seems easier to
do it by e-mail since I am in California
and you are in New York. So, here we
go:
We’ve all been hearing that there
is going to be a Ceramic Millennium
in Amsterdam in 1999, and that you
have something to do with organizing
it. Can you clarify this rumour, and
tell us exactly what it is?
(GC) Yes, it is true and the
worst kept secret in the ceramics
world. I have been working on this
for three years together with our
executive coordinator Dawn
Bennett and co-chair, Mark Del
Vecchio. We get mail from people
in Madagascar, Kuwait and the
Kalihari Desert who have heard of
the event through the grapevine.
However, we went “official” on the
29th of September when the event
was formally announced at a press
reception in New York by Bob
Hiensch, Consul General of the
Netherlands.

▼
18

The event is a world leadership
congress and the 8th International
Ceramics Symposium organized by
the Ceramic Arts Foundation. (The
first took place in Syracuse, New
York in 1979). What this means is
that we will be bringing together
2,000 of the “movers and shakers”—the leading writers, educators, museum directors, curators,
historians, designers, artists, architects, collectors and directors of the
various ceramics groups and asso-

ciations—men and women who
keep the field alive with their
activism and enthusiasm.
The event itself is quite complex and comprises five parts.
The first is a four-day symposium at the RAI Congress Center
with 50 exceptional speakers, both
from the ceramics world and “outsiders”