Curator Chat

We Ask Leading Museum Curators About What’s Going On In Their World

Ethan Lasser
John Moors Cabot Chair, Art of the Americas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Boston, MA, (617) 267-9300, www.mfa.org

What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why?
I am writing this from my house—all MFA staff, and much of the art world is working from home due to COVID-19. So what I am looking forward to is a return to normalcy—to the rhythms of the workday, and the day-to-day interactions with colleagues and collections that make museum work so special. I have been thinking a lot about the grand hallways and galleries of the MFA and replaying the paintings that hang in these spaces in my mind. The museum’s halls are so inspiring, and I have been trying to travel through them imaginatively, playing a bit of memory palace. At this point, I just want to be back in the building—back to a place where I can think, talk about and walk past great works of art every day.

What are you reading?
David Blight’s biography of Frederic Douglass, [Frederic Douglass: Prophet of Freedom]. I am digging into a project about Edgefield stoneware and the work of the enslaved African American artisan David Drake. The prolific Douglass offers us a way into the significance of the famous couplets that Drake incised into the shoulder of his giant stoneware jars.

Interesting exhibit, gallery opening or work of art you’ve seen recently.
I am relatively new to the MFA and just beginning to absorb the wonders of our American art collection. But the work that comes to mind first is a recent acquisition: an unknown 19th-century painter’s view of Navassa Island in the Caribbean. Navassa was a center for the bat guano industry, which was used as fertilizer. What is amazing about this painting is the way it portrays the island as a quasi-utopia, something straight out of Sir Thomas More.

What are you researching at the moment?
I am working on an essay about Dave Drake and Edgefield ceramics, and thinking through what it meant for an enslaved artisan to sign and date his work in South Carolina in the years before the Civil War.

What is your dream exhibit to curate? Or see someone else curate?
I think it’s time for us to reassess Norman Rockwell and start to think anew about his contributions to American art and culture. —