Anina Major

• Name — Anina Major • Born — 1981 • Birthplace — Nassau, Bahamas • Education — Rhode Island School of Design (MFA, 2017) • Occupation — Ceramicist, educator, visual artist • Awards — 2026 United States Artists Fellowship • Website — aninamajor.com

Anina Major was born in the Caribbean nation of the Bahamas. She grew up among the cultural traditions of weaving with natural fibers and learned from her grandmother the practice of Bahamian straw plaiting. Major received her Master of Fine Arts degree in 2017 from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence.

Anina Major's work is distinguished by the artist's craft technique of weaving on clay, which draws on West African designs and style. Her ceramic work comments on issues of migration, identity, and geopolitics through crafts, particularly ceramics. Anina Major is a faculty member at Bennington College, Vermont, where she teaches ceramics. Her is included in the long-duration display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC. In 2025, Anina Major was a finalist of the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, a brainchild of fashion designer and then Loewe's creative director, Jonathan Anderson. Major's work has been featured in the New York Times and Forbes Magazine.

Major's work is included in the permanent collections of several global collecting institutions including the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; National Gallery of the Bahamas; Nassau; and Rhode Island School of Design Museum (RISD Museum); Rhode Island.