Wayne Higby will receive the Smithsonian Visionary Award for 2026. Wayne Higby, director of the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum and a longtime ceramic artist and educator, will receive the Smithsonian Visionary Award for 2026 in the connection with the 250th anniversary of the U.S.
Past recipients of this honor include Wendell Castle, Albert Paley, Dale Chihuly, Joyce J. Scott, Mary Lee Hu, Judith Schaechter, and Nick Cave.
Lonnie G. Bunch III, Secretary of the Smithsonian, will present the Award during an opening night ceremony April 22, 2026, at the 44th annual Smithsonian Craft Show, one of the nation’s premier shows of American handmade art and design.
Higby joined the faculty of the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1973 and has served as Robert C. Turner Chair of Ceramic Art and Kruson Distinguished Professor. As recipient of the Smithsonian Visionary Award, he joins a group of artists recognized by a distinguished panel of curators and experts to have risen to the pinnacle of sculptural arts and design, who have works in major museums, and who have demonstrated distinction, creativity, exceptional artistry and vision in their respective medium.
Higby is the recipient of the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Teaching, and his ceramic art works are held in the permanent collections of numerous art museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, the Hermitage Art Museum, St Petersburg, Russia and the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. Higby’s retrospective was held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and documented in the hardcover book Infinite Place: The Ceramic Art of Wayne Higby published by Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart, Germany in 2013.