What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why?
I am excited to see Philip Guston Now which begins its tour this summer at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston. After delaying the exhibition, I am curious to see how the curatorial team revisited their interpretative strategies when approaching Guston’s complicated and arresting work. While not a specific show, being new to Maine, I am also keen to spend the summer months visiting all of the fabulous cultural institutions throughout the state.
What are you reading?
A mix of things right now. Anna Arabindan-Kesson’s Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World is a compelling study of the entangled and global networks that connected enslaved Black labor, the cotton commodities markets and visual culture during the long 19th century. I am also reading Louise Trag’s A Century of Color, 1886–1986, which charts the history of art communities here in Ogunquit.
Interesting exhibit, gallery opening or work of art you’ve seen recently?
I have been entirely consumed with getting to know the terrific examples of American modernism in the Ogunquit Museum of American Art. Along with exceptional examples by Marsden Hartley, Walt Kuhn, Marguerite Zorach, Peggy Bacon and Yasuo Kuniyoshi, to name but a few, I have enjoyed discovering the fascinating works of lesser-known artists like Channing Hare.
What are you researching at the moment?
At the moment, I am between a few projects. One is exploring 19th century statistical atlases published by the U.S. Census Department and W.E.B. Du Bois’ intertextual critique of their data in the remarkable diagrams he and his students from Atlanta University presented at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair. I am also diving into the transatlantic networks that formed around the critic, artists, collector and instructor, Hamilton Easter Field, who founded an art school in Ogunquit in 1911.
What is your dream exhibit to curate? Or see someone else curate?
Maybe not a dream exhibit, but since finding myself oceanside in Ogunquit, a show that I would have fun with would be one on the visual and cultural history around surfing. I grew up in Southern California and am still an avid surfer. The topic touches on so many important themes from the enduring legacy of Indigenous cultures, the effects of colonialism, climate change, inequality, technology and leisure. —
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