James Melchert

Jim Melchert was at the center of the Bay Area’s artistic growth and served as Visual Arts head at the NEA and Director of the American Academy at Rome. His work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Museum of California, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the University Art Museum at UC Berkeley. Melchert has worked in a variety of media, including drawing, film, and ceramics. The path of his artistic development is conceptual, and his ideas led him to a unique process involving ceramic tiles: breaking them, drawing on them, reassembling them and painting the new constructions with glaze.