Curator Chat

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

High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA

Stephanie Heydt
Margaret and Terry Stent Curator of American Art
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
(404) 733-4400, www.high.org

What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why?
I am looking forward to Sargent, Whistler and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano, which will be opening this fall at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The show promises to be not only gorgeous, but a thoughtful consideration of how American artists engaged with the revival of the craft industry in Venice. I am also excited by a show that recently opened on the 20th-century painter Alma Thomas, organized by the Columbus Museum, titled Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful.

What are you reading?
I’m reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, 1852, a sharp commentary about Hawthorne’s own experience in a failed utopian community. I chose it because I am researching 19th-century gender dynamics for an exhibition I am working on.

Interesting exhibit, gallery opening or work of art you’ve seen recently.
I have seen a virtual tour of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s new American galleries installation and am intrigued! I cannot wait to see it in person. The new galleries take a refreshingly broad and inclusive view of American art. I especially appreciate the new interpretations that shed light on issues and communities often relegated to the margins, making space for Indigenous people and people of color in the story of American art.

What are you researching at the moment?
I am currently working on the American modernist painter, Joseph Stella. Our show is reviving his fascinating nature-based work, which has been often overlooked. I am also starting work on a show that I will be co-curating on late 19th-century representations of women and the breach of gender norms. We are focusing mainly on the work of Winslow Homer and Eastman Johnson, two artists who embrace the subject of the modern woman in the post-Civil War years.

What is your dream exhibit to curate? Or see someone else curate?
I have a handful of shows that I am excited to pull out of their current holding pattern. One is a late 19th-century subject and another a post-World War II topic. But I will not spill the beans quite yet! —