Minnie Negoro

1919 Born Los Angeles, California

1998 Died Mason Island, Connecticut

EDUCATION

1944 BA University of California, Los Angeles, California

1950 MFA New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University, Alfred, New York

PRIMARY WORK EXPERIENCE

1945—1950 Ceramic Engineering Research, New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University, Alfred, New York

1950—1965 Studio Potter

1954—1956 Instructor, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island

1955— Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles, California

1961-1965 New York University and Greenwich House Pottery, New York, New York

1965—1989 Professor University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut

 BIOGRAPHY

Minnie Negoro, a prolific studio potter, created a wide range of thrown functional pieces. She used various clay bodies including stoneware, porcelain, and earthenware throughout her career, her work reflected a strong mid-century aesthetic.

 Negoro and her family had been sent to a Japanese internment camp in Wyoming where she met Daniel Rhodes who helped her leave the internment camp.

Daniel Rhodes, a mentor to Negoro until his death in 1989 emphasized the importance of technique, skill at the potter's wheel and aesthetics attitudes to work. In addition to her studio work Negoro was a very active teacher who incorporated these fundamental concepts into her teaching. She credited Bernard Leach with making her feel it was OK to be Japanese. In 1965 she was brought to the University of Connecticut where she established a ceramics program in the School of Fine Arts.

Negoro’s work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA, the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, CT. In 1992, the Benton Museum, University of Connecticut, Stores, CT held a retrospective of her work.