CURATOR CHAT
What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why?
I’m looking forward to Larger Than Memory: Contemporary Art From Indigenous North America that opens at the Heard in May. It includes art produced in the 21st century by 22 contemporary Indigenous artists from the United States and Canada working in a variety of media. It has been several years since we have had a contemporary exhibition of this scale at the Heard. Erin Joyce is working with Diana Pardue to develop the exhibition that will be shown in our main Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust Grand Gallery and side galleries. The exhibition includes several artists who have not shown at the Heard before but whose work we have very much wanted to bring to our audience.
What are you reading?
I’m reading Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s by Tiffany Midge. Funny and poignant at the same time like the best Native American humor.
Her writing about her mother especially touched me as it combined her mother’s wit with her sense of loss. The book also has a great foreword by Geary Hobson, who gives an excellent overview of other humor writing. Also Scrape the Willow Until It Sings: The Words and Work of Basket Maker Julia Parker by Deborah Valoma. Even though the exhibition that I worked on, David Hockney’s Yosemite and Masters of California Basketry, is open, having the opportunity to leisurely read Parker’s teachings in her voice is an experience to be savored. I realized when I was working on the exhibition how little of the first person voice was available from these weavers of the early decades of the
20th century. It makes Julia Parker’s voice in Valoma’s book incredibly special. Her family has come to the Heard to present programs, and it is great to see how she has inspired them and many others.
Interesting exhibit, gallery opening or work of art you’ve seen recently.
I just visited a small exhibition in the gallery at the Tempe Center for the Arts called We ave: construct. code. connect. It includes art by two Navajo artists, one of whom, Velma Kee Craig, is an Andrew Mellon Fellow at the Heard. Both she and Daniel Nez have wonderfully original approaches to art that address their cultural heritage. It’s great when exhibitions of contemporary art include people from a variety of cultural backgrounds.
What are you researching at the moment?
We have two wonderful textile collections that we will be showing in separate exhibitions. Rebecca and Jean Paul Valette gave us 57 remarkable textiles with ceremonial themes from the early decades of the 20th century. We are looking forward to bringing the thoughts of contemporary Navajo weavers to help us understand the weavers’ approaches to the subject matter. We also received a large collection of contemporary Navajo textiles made by Mark and Julie Dalrymple. It is a beautiful collection with the kind of documentation that curators dream about. We, the Andrew Mellon Fellows and I, are working to let weavers know that we have an example of their work and to solicit their artist statements and anything else they would like to tell us about the textile. It is so great to have the chance to hear from the contemporary weavers and to share the information when we exhibit their textiles.
What is your dream exhibit to curate? Or see someone else curate?
I’ve been wanting to do a humor exhibition for several years. I really want to see Laughter and Resilience: Humor in Native American Art that Dr. Denise Neil did at the Wheelwright Museum. It looks like a great list of artists. It’s a rich subject that teaches so much in a memorable way. I’d love to have a chance to share those lessons with our visitors.