Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Just Checking In
Series begets vulnerable conversations, opportunities for learning
The artist check-in series being shared on the website for 21c Museum Hotels developed organically, Alice Gray Stites reveals. Stites is the museum director and chief curator for the boutique museum/hotel chain, and as she was continuing communications with her network of artists, found herself having conversations that, 12 weeks ago, a regular work schedule just didn’t allow for.
For example, when Stites found herself needing some paperwork from an artist friend she hadn’t spoken to in some five years, rather than continuing just through email, she picked up the phone.
“Which, I don’t think three months ago I would have done,” Stites shares. “We ended up having a really long conversation, and she told me about this project she’d done recently for Denmark’s largest hospital as the pandemic spread across Denmark. The hospital came to Astrid [Krogh] and asked her to design a room for the terminally ill. And I thought what an incredible thing, for a hospital to think we need an artist to create a space of comfort.”
Sharing that story on 21c’s blog became one of the first Artist Check Ins that was more in depth than a series of questions. Some of the posts are more straightforward — “How has the pandemic affected you and your practice? What are you doing? What advice do you give other artists in this moment?” — but it’s the stories that come out of these more intimate conversations that have been inspiring for Stites.
“I hope they feel more personal than maybe just an artist interview,” she says of the weekly series. “We are
all very conscious of how vulnerable we are in this moment on all sorts of levels, and I think that allows for a more intimate and honest kind of conversation.
“Artists are vulnerable when they make work and share it with the world; they’re often sharing their most intimate selves and emotions and thoughts. I think this is an opportunity to meet them there in that space of vulnerability and honesty.”
Since she started the series nearly three months ago, Stites admits she and the rest of her team find themselves in a different kind of vulnerable space in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
“Some of [our artists] were already working on issues around injustice and historical and current and present day instances of inequality. But the issues of police brutality and racism have come into sharper focus in this moment and we want to get out of the way and allow artists to engage and to connect and give strength to their communities,” she says.
“Part of the origins of the Artist Check In at 21c is we do really believe that visionary artists are the problemsolvers in our society, are the ones that can lead us forward. So the Artist Check In was conceived as a way of honoring that and saying, ‘How can we create a platform for artists to give us the road map to a new day?’ And now that feels even more urgent.”