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Over the past several years, emerging recognition of ceramics within contemporary art has been a source of celebration, derision, and puzzlement. Ceramics has faced an equally compelling new balance of power shifting from men to women in academic programs and in curation. Women and people of color are opening new pathways for academic and curatorial platforms ... those emerging with divergent cultural viewpoints. Change is occurring in what had come before ... a history of men who had achieved status and dominated representation in education and museum settings. Ceramics has migrated from the domain of decorative arts and assimilated into modern or contemporary art spaces, eclipsing the arcs of artists that Voulkos and others initiated in the 1960s. Many of the works discussed in the context of ceramics history were produced by un-named makers. While great pottery cultures flourished in indigenous cultures in indigenous cultures in both Africa and the West, more often than not, women and others as transmitters of cultural agency have been under-explored. While the focus of academic lectures in ceramic art history has predominantly been on male makers, the vibrancy of current practice is propelled by emerging voices of artists of color, non-binary, and immigrant or transcultural contexts. Theory and rubrics that seek to frame distinction in ceramic art and the domain of craft are evolving to embrace performative, and socially engaged works. Curators and artists are shaping these shifting paradigms to affect the ways that we exhibit, teach, and think critically about ceramic art.