The Newark Museum of Art’s agreement with the potter’s heirs covers an 1852 jug valued at around $135,000 and provides for its purchase back for the permanent collection.
The Newark Museum of Art has agreed to restore ownership of a ceramic jug by David Drake to his heirs and purchase it back for its permanent collection, The Art Newspaper said. Drake was a South Carolina potter who was enslaved when he made the jug.
The museum commissioned several appraisals before a value of around $135,000 was decided on. The museum acquired the 1852 jug in 2022 to help teach the history of enslavement and enslaved labor as part of its 2023 reinstallation of its American art galleries.
Newark approached Drake’s family in July 2026, citing the family’s earlier partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and proposing a meeting to identify ways to collaborate. In 2025, the Boston museum returned two of Drake’s stoneware vessels to his descendants and purchased one back.
Newark director and chief executive Lisa Funderburke said Amber Germano, the museum’s senior director of registration and collections management, first asked her to sign a letter to the family. Further family meetings followed, along with discussions between Funderburke and museum leaders. Baker said Funderburke immediately understood what needed to be done. Family adviser George Fatheree described the arrangement as a “win-win,” saying the family’s approach should not be a zero-sum game.
Drake signed and inscribed pottery with poems, often in rhyming couplets. His writing is notable in part because laws restricted enslaved people’s literacy.
Yaba Baker, one of Drake’s great-grandsons, said the family agreed that taking the pots out of public view would be a disservice because of Drake’s importance to art history and Black history. The Newark agreement provides for the jug to remain in the museum’s permanent collection.
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