More than 120 educators and artists are expected to arrive in Lawrence this week to check out a number of ceramics exhibits.

The bus tour is part of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts conference Wednesday-Saturday at the Hyatt Regency Crown Center and Westin Crown Center in Kansas City, Mo.

“It’s a huge organization,” said Anne M. Bracker, of Bracker’s Good Earth Clays Inc., 1831 E. 1450 Road. “Each year the conference travels from one city to the next. It’s an international event.”

Three busloads of conference participants about 135 total will come to Lawrence to see exhibits at Bracker’s Good Earth Clays, the Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art, the Lawrence Arts Center and the Art and Design Gallery at Kansas University.

Two busloads will come on Wednesday; the other bus will arrive Saturday.

At Bracker’s, artists and educators will see “A Cone Box Retrospective, 1972 to Present,” a collection of works that were purchased by Anne M. Bracker’s parents, Anne W. and the late William Bracker, her sister, Cindy, and Inge Balch, an art professor at Baker University in Baldwin.

William Bracker founded the Cone Box Show; Balch became the show’s organizer after Bracker’s death. The exhibit opens Tuesday and runs through March 17.

At the Lawrence Arts Center, 200 W. Ninth St., the participants will be introduced to entries in this year’s Cone Box Show. “2002 Cone Box Juried Exhibition” will be displayed Monday-Saturday and then will return to Baker University, where it will be shown March 26-April 12.

The two shows feature ceramic art pieces from throughout the world. The works are no larger than 3 inches by 3 inches by 6 inches, the dimensions of the Orton Standard Pyrometic Cone Box.

Ceramic artists use pyrometer cones for monitoring temperatures inside the kiln during the firing process.

“Contemporary Ceramics East and West,” an exhibit running through May 19 at the Spencer Museum of Art on the KU campus, is also on the bus tour itinerary. The show explores the innovation and diversity of the art form in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in Europe, the United States and Japan.

The exhibit features works by about 30 artists, including Beatrice Wood, Vik Muniz, Richard Notkin, Diego Romero, Ken Ferguson, Ruth Duckworth, Ron Nagle, Jun Kaneko, Onodera Gen, Ito Sekisui, Tsujimura Shir, Suzuki Osamu and others. Co-curators are Mary Dusenbury, acting curator of Asian art, and Susan Earle, curator of European and American art.

When they stop at the Art and Design Gallery, participants will see “Kansas Clay Connections,” a show featuring the works of Kansas ceramists. The display can be viewed through March 22 in KU’s Art and Design Building.

Although they are not stops on the bus tour, three other Lawrence venues also are having ceramics shows.

Fields Gallery, 712 Mass., is displaying stoneware sculpture by Ryan Paget. The Phoenix Gallery, 919 Mass., is showing “Elemental Expression: Three Women Ceramists,” featuring works by Joyce Furney, Glenda Taylor and Cathy Tisdale.

SilverWorks and More, 715 Mass., is presenting “Woodfired Ceramics,” works by Sam Taylor, Diana Thomas, Willem Gebben, Louise Harter and Sequoia Miller.

In addition, ceramic arts exhibits are planned in dozens of galleries in Topeka, Leavenworth, Emporia, Manhattan, Prairie Village, the Kansas City area and Sedalia, Mo.

Bracker’s Good Earth Clays also is offering a raku workshop this weekend. Instructor is Steven Branfman, who operates The Potters Shop and School in Needham, Mass., and teaches pottery at the Thayer Academy in Braintree, Mass.

“We’ll have 40 or so participants,” Bracker said.