What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why?
I can’t wait to see Shinichi Sawada: Agents of Clay, which opens at the Mint Museum in April 2024 and is being co-organized by the Mint and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Sawada is a self-taught Japanese ceramic artist, and to be honest, I did not know about him until my colleague presented her proposal at one of our exhibition selection meetings. I was immediately taken by Sawada’s clay sculptures, each of which has vaguely human or animal features but is so uniquely imaginative and powerful.

What are you reading?
I just started the recently released novel In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune. He writes fantasy fiction featuring LGBTQ+ characters and has become one of my favorite authors in recent years. He creates imaginary worlds that I wish I could visit and incredibly appealing and quirky characters that I wish I could meet. He also makes me laugh out loud on almost every page!

Interesting exhibit, gallery opening or work of art you’ve seen recently.
I was very moved by Tina Williams Brewer: Stories of Grace, a special exhibition organized and on view at the Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, South Carolina. Her quilts are so richly layered—literally in terms of the way she constructs each quilt, adding fabric or another design element over an area that she had already created, but also because of the multiple visual references depicted in many of them. And beyond all that, Brewer’s quilts are stunningly beautiful.

What are you researching at the moment?
I am currently working on an upcoming gallery rotation at the Mint that is keeping me busy. Opening in November 2023, the installation will feature about 40 works of art from our Chinese ceramics collection. I freely admit that that is not my area of expertise even though our small collection of historical Asian ceramics falls under my jurisdiction, so I’m combing through various textbooks in our library to make sure that my label content is accurate. I am grateful that this project has reminded me how especially tranquil and lovely the celadon glaze is!

What is your dream exhibit to curate? Or see someone else curate?
I would love to organize an exhibition on the career of Marc-Louis-Emanuel Solon, focusing especially on his perfecting and popularizing the pâte-sur-pâte technique. This was a form of porcelain decoration in which thin layers of white slip were successively added—in an extraordinarily labor-intensive process—to the colored surface of an object to create a design in low relief. The design could then be carved to give it further definition. Solon mastered the technique at Sèvres in the 1860s and then in 1870 introduced it at Minton. His pâte-sur-pâte decorations are breathtakingly beautiful, and I would welcome a chance to showcase them for our visitors. 

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