Platter with Running Hare

Ferguson was Chairman of the Kansas City Art Institute Ceramics Department for more than thirty years. Voted one of the 12 greatest living potters in 1981 by readers of Ceramics Monthly, Ferguson has received numerous honors over the years. The recipient of two National Endowments for the Arts grants for craftsmen, a Mid-America College Arts Award for Studio Art, a Tiffany grant and an Alliance of Independent Colleges of Arts grant. His awards demonstrate how he has been recognized as much for his teaching as his art work. He has a reputation for inspiring his students to develop their own idiosyncratic styles while simultaneously instilling a respect for the medium of clay and its history. He has had over 100 exhibitions worldwide including a retrospective exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City in 1995. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Syracuse, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the American Craft Museum in New York City are among the numerous public and private collections worldwide that include works by Ferguson.