MOLLY HATCH

APRIL 25, 2024–APRIL 26, 2026

1ST FLOOR: MARK & IRENE KAUFFMAN ARCADE
2ND FLOOR: JAN SCHMIDT LOGGIA

Commissioned as part of Sarasota Art Museum’s Inside Out Program, Hatch’s new site-specific installation, Amalgam (2023), will span two floors, visually linking the Jan Schmidt Loggia and Mark & Irene Kauffman Arcade. Consisting of more than 450 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.

Renown: Commissioned by architect Peter Marino for Tiffany & Co. Blue Box Cafe Taipei, this work references renderings for a brooch from the Tiffany & Co archives, this work reinterprets the iconic brand's history and presents it anew with white gold accents. Made using an entirely new process, this work is composed of over 100 hand-thrown and hand-painted earthenware plates that hang in an organic, jewel-like arrangement.

Permanently installed and On View at the Dubai UAE Tiffany & Co. store, Menagerie, Citrine and Roseate, three works commissioned by architect Peter Marino for the Blue Box Cafe. Referencing renderings for brooches housed in the Tiffany & Co archives, these works reinterprets the iconic brand's history and presents it anew with white gold accents. Made using an entirely new process, each work is composed of about 100 hand-thrown and hand-painted earthenware plates that hang in an organic, jewel-like arrangement.

“Just a few weeks after the opening of its newly renovated Fifth Avenue flagship in Manhattan, Tiffany & Co. will be relaunching its cafe, Blue Box, with a newly appointed chef, Daniel Boulud. Like the rest of the 10-story building, the cafe, which sits on the sixth floor, is designed by the architect Peter Marino, who commissioned the ceramist Molly Hatch to create its artwork. To adorn the walls, the artist assembled her signature hand-painted earthenware plates in the shape of brooches from the brand’s archives.” Quote from Angela Koh, New York Times Style Magazine, May 11, 2023

Bistro

Molly Hatch’s signature plate paintings—large-scale installations of hand-glazed ceramic plates—reimagine historical decorative arts through a contemporary lens, while bridging the gap between decorative and fine art. The piece Staccato diffuses an 18th century Chinese export pattern from Owen Jones’ book The Grammar of Chinese Ornament over a gridded installation of 108 hand-painted earthenware plates. The glazed surfaces collectively become a fragmented canvas for a delicate, painterly re-rendering.

This commissioned, large-scale, hand-painted plate painting was inspired by two ca. 1755 Chelsea porcelain factory plates from the High’s Frances and Emory Cocke Collection of English Ceramics. Molly Hatch’s unique new work re-imagines the original depiction of flora and fauna found in the botanical Physic Garden that neighbored the Chelsea factory and inspired workers in the 1750s. 

Ceramic Artist Molly Hatch has been commissioned to produce a monumental three-part installation in the niches in the Engelhard Court. Hatch is known for her murals made up of underglaze-painted porcelain plates, including two major installations at the High Museum in Atlanta. Repertoire will be her largest commission to date, honoring the Newark Museum’s 107-year-tradition of collecting contemporary ceramic art, and commemorating the retirement of Curator of Decorative Arts Ulysses Dietz after 37 years. 

Through all her works, Hatch describes herself as “going to history with an eye to interrupting it.” She is searching for her place as a contemporary female artist in the medium’s storied past. “I feel like I’m adding to a conversation and not necessarily wanting to make something new; I want to add my two cents to this long story. What comes to light more recently is being inspired by other women who are thinking about how we exist in the art world as women—or don’t exist, and understanding that a lot of what I’ve been doing is saying ‘I belong here in this story of art.’ Typically, history records the male story, so by appropriating, reinterpreting, re-presenting, breaking those images down and abstracting them by putting them on plates, I’m re-presenting them to you but from a contemporary feminist perspective,” she says….

Walk into Sarasota Art Museum right now and you’ll see a giant new commission: Amalgam, a “plate painting”—that is, a large-scale ceramic installation—by American ceramic artist Molly Hatch.

Hatch’s work has been exhibited internationally, with permanent installations in many museums, and in commissions for brands like Tiffany & Co. She’s also created commercial work through collaborations with retailers like Anthropologie. For nearly 20 years, her art has focused on merging the distinctive look of painted surfaces with the physicality of ceramics. Drawing on the history of decorative arts and her rigorous practice as a painter, her work examines the meaning of inherited objects in our lives by defamiliarizing traditional patterns and motifs and scaling traditional designs into large pieces that venture into abstraction. 

All of the artists in the show—from Urs Fischer to Holzer to Johnson—have work represented elsewhere in the 10-floor store. A Marino favorite: a wall of hand-painted porcelain plates by Massachusetts artist Molly Hatch. On the upper floor, a replica of a new artwork by Fischer (the original is headed to Milan for the new Tiffany & Co. flagship opening there next year) is a dense collage of iconic rings by the house.

There are also several works depicting a favorite Marino subject: himself. These include Schnabel’s 2022 portrait of the architect rendered in paint over smashed plates. Meanwhile, among the highlights of the show are several bronze consoles, known as “boxes,” by Marino. “I’ve been designing them for 20 years,” says Marino, who was inspired by his own collection of Renaissance and Baroque bronzes. “I’m working on a book on them.”

Tiffany & Co. is continuing its work with Peter Marino for its inaugural art exhibition at The Landmark. The architect, who is behind the fine jeweler’s new Fifth Avenue flagship, is unveiling an art exhibition in The Landmark’s gallery space, called “Culture of Creativity,” which marks the store’s first exhibition since opening in April ...

There's more to admire at the Tiffany Landmark, the brand’s new flagship than its outstanding architecture and sparkling jewels. 

An inaugural art exhibition, “Culture of Creativity,” will open on March 4 at the iconic Fifth Avenue store. The work in the bi-level exhibition is sourced from architect Peter Marino’s private collection, which is typically housed at the Peter Marino Art Foundation in Southampton. Marino himself revamped the Tiffany & Co. Landmark’s multi-million dollar renovation that was revealed in May 2023.

“Culture of Creativity” showcases Marino’s collection of Tiffany & Co. sterling silver pieces from the 1880s along with almost 70 contemporary artworks in a variety of mediums by 26 different artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, McArthur Binion, Sarah Charlesworth, Francesco Clemente, Johan Creten, Andre Dubreuil, Roe Ethridge, Urs Fischer, Hans Hartung, Molly Hatch, Gregor Hildebrandt, Damien Hirst, Jenny Holzer, Rashid Johnson, Y.Z Kami, Les Lalanne, Peter Marino, Vik Muniz, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Antoine Poncet, Richard Prince, Julian Schnabel, Sarah Sze, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Not Vital and Stanley Whitney….

Seen in Veranda Magazine in an Atlanta area home designed by Heather Dewberry and Will Huff Molly, Hatch’s ceramic wall installation plays on the blue and white theme (traditional in decorative arts ceramics) that runs throughout the home.
The artwork on the wall in the family room at Villa Juanita was one of the last elements added to the house. The designers kept waiting for inspiration for this wall and found it at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.⁠
Molly Hatch creates ceramic installations based on traditional porcelains with a modern scale and interpretation. The blue and white delft chargers in the breakfast room inspired the multi-plate installation in this room.⁠
⁠Explore more of this project in the May/June 2024 issue of Veranda Magazine

The sixth-floor cafe, originally introduced in 2017, has been redesigned, featuring jewelry-themed ceramic wall sculptures by Molly Hatch, and will be called the Blue Box Café by Daniel Boulud. Galleries on the eighth and ninth floors will host long-term rotating exhibitions. “We really wanted to give the feeling of this being more than just a store and a full experience,” says Alexandre Arnault…

Ducere, from the Latin meaning “to lead,” is composed of 198 perfectly round dinner plates arranged in triptych, each plate hand-painted to recreate the psychedelic Islamicizing pattern Christopher Dresser designed for his 1872 Minton factory Moon Flask. Dresser’s porcelain flask, an important Victorian-period piece from the “granddaddy of Industrial Design,” as Hatch calls him, is one of the Museum’s most recent acquisitions under Mary-Dailey Desmarais’s curatorial direction. Desmarais commissioned Hatch to design Ducere using the Moon Flask as a touchstone. No other artist could be better suited for this reboot.

“It was not only interesting from the point of view of activating our collection,” explains Desmarais, “but also showing a contemporary artist working within the medium of ceramics, that is a traditional medium used for centuries, and doing something entirely new with it. To see how this contemporary woman artist is navigating ceramic practice — doing a completely new take on a work of art in our collection, and something visually captivating, and also historically profound — was really interesting to us.”

Out of the exhibition’s 250 objects on view that broke boundaries in the world of design, roughly half are sourced from the museum’s permanent collection, with one new commission by American artist Molly Hatch, who is represented by Todd Merrill Studio.

As visitors ascend the grand staircase to the exhibition space, they are greeted by a monumental installation, Ducere(2022), created by Hatch and her two studio assistants. A grid of 198 ceramic plates in richly painted jewel tones and real gold spans 20 feet wide. The triptych draws inspiration from Christopher Dresser’s Minton Moon Flask (1872), a recent acquisition of the MMFA….

Parall(ELLES) A History of Women in Design Montreal Museum of Fine Arts: Designs by American and Canadian women are the subject of this sprawling exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Stewart Program for Modern Design. Objects from the mid-19th century through today highlight the breadth of styles and media that female designers made while marginalized in social, political, and personal settings. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) has also commissioned ceramicist Molly Hatch to create a giant mosaic of 198 hand-painted plates that will take over the exhibition pavilion.