Museum Thursday- inSPIRATion

In honor of our opening which is this Saturday this weeks #MT will be on the inSPIRATion show at the Katzen Museum.  At the moment it is still going through its final installation phases but everything is looking fantastic.  Pieces are going up on the walls the artists are pitching in on the installation.  It’s all just so exciting.  I wanted to take moment to reflect on this whole process, cause its been a pretty amazing one

I remember walking into the Curatorial Practice class with only a vague idea of just what this would entail.  I knew that we would be curating a show but in my mind I assumed that meant that Jack had developed an exhibition that we would be working on.  Basically we would be playing intern but for credit.  This was not the case at all.  We walked in and were told that this was our show, and that we would be creating it from bottom to top.  From that point on it was completely in our hands.

We each were set with the task of choosing an artist.  This of course is the most important part in my opinion.  I walked into this with the notion that it would probably be a long time before I would be in charge of curating a show again.  So I wanted to make this one count.  I wanted to pick the right artist, someone who I really believe in, not simply something that I happened upon and thought was cool.  I decided that my method of going about this was going to be to look through the boxes of proposals that were filed away at the Katzen.  I literally picked up a box in the middle of the alphabet, opened it up and just started reading, viewing and scrutinizing everything that was available to me.  I spent about 3 or 4 days doing this coming into the museum whenever I had a spare moment.  I would find an artist that I thought was interesting every once in a while, and would write their names down, save a few images to my desktop and continue looking.  I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything really fantastic.  In the end I had about 15 artists that were potential candidates, one in particular that I was specifically intrigued by, but I wasn’t sure if I would be able to bring his pieces in because they were fairly monumental.  When I had collected my list of 15 I went home and put all the images into a slide show and sat there for probably and hour just watching the same images filter through and I kept coming back to one artist in particular.

So I brought my proposal to Jack.  I explained that I had found this amazing artist, that I just loved, but there was a catch.  His pieces were huge and usually suspended and I wasn’t sure if trying to get these into the museum for this collaborative show was realistic.  We agreed that we could bring in one piece and hang it directly on the wall.  I was so excited that I was going to be able to curate this artists works.  I immediately contacted Fletcher Crossman and the rest is history.

I am so excited to have the piece “Cinderella” in this show.  Seeing it in person yesterday was amazing.  Barring any unforeseen complications the piece will be hung as it was intended were it to be suspended -it is still hung against the wall but will a few modifications.  It has all come together better than I could have imagined.  And I cannot wait until Saturday, when the public gets to see it as well.

As for the rest of the artists and exhibitions they are all wonderful as well.  If you would like more details on the artists that will be showcased you can follow the facebook-inSPIRATion link on the side bar.

This has been a great experience and has gotten me even more excited about my future career in Arts Management.