WE ASK LEADING MUSEUM CURATORS ABOUT WHAT’S GOING ON IN THEIR WORLD
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 the Art Institute of Chicago’s Georgia O’keeffe: “My New
Yorks” opening in June. The response of painters to architecture has been a particular focus of mine since grad school days, most recently manifesting in our 2023 exhibition Andrew Wyeth: Home Places, so a show dedicated to this aspect of the practice of a key fellow traveler of Wyeth, whose work resonates with his in so many ways, will be a must-see. The cocurators, Sarah Kelly Oehler and Annelise Madsen, are always inspiring colleagues and I’m sure they’ll have many new insights to share.
What are you reading?
Philip Conkling’s Islands in Time: A Natural and Human History of the Islands of Maine. The author, one of the co-founders of the Island Institute, gives a vivid perspective on the various forces that have shaped the thousands of islands in the Maine archipelago. Because this landscape is a lifelong love of mine and its deep and continuing tradition of creative response was my gateway to art history, it’s invigorating to go beneath the surface and to see it anew through Conkling’s eyes.
Interesting exhibit, gallery opening or work of art you’ve seen recently.
I’m always on the lookout for interesting voices who find new possibilities in realm of landscape, and was thrilled to find not one but two with solo exhibitions at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, just across the street from our Wyeth Study Center on the campus of the Farnsworth Art Museum. Jeane Cohen’s sumptuous, painterly evocations of an unpeopled firescape feel urgent and essential. Alison Hildreth’s topographic abstractions overwhelm and immerse a viewer in the infinite complexity of land itself.
What are you researching at the moment?
I’m deep in the topic of Andrew Wyeth’s decades-long response to the Kuerner Farm in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, the focus of a 2025 exhibition co-organized with Reynolda House Museum of American Art (Winston-salem, NC). This place and the people who lived and worked there became the source of some of Wyeth’s most important creations in the media of egg tempera and watercolor with which he is most associated.
We’re working hard to get beyond the mythology and received wisdom about this fascinating creative chapter to understand why and how this remarkable practice took shape.
What is your dream exhibit to curate? Or see someone else curate?
It’d be a dream to dive into the musical life of the Wyeth family of artists. Beethoven, Bach and Sibelius are the most frequently cited musical fascinations of N.C. and Andrew Wyeth both. Andrew’s sister Ann Wyeth Mccoy was a composer who wrote some works in relation to her brother’s paintings. I have done some writing on Sibelius and on the representation of paintings in music in a previous life, so the connection is irresistible. The goal would be to commission one or more great contemporary composers to write new works in relation to the Wyeths. We’ll make it happen someday!