In just a few sentences, please tell us about your current job.
I joined the Tufts University Art Galleries (TUAG) team in August 2023 and jumped into exhibition, programming, and strategic planning with Director and Chief Curator Dina Deitsch, Senior Preparator and Installation Manager David Thacker, and Exhibitions Assistant Meera Chauhan, who comprise the TUAG / Boston staff. I work closely with the TUAG / Medford staff at our location at Tufts’ main campus as well. Since TUAG is the public center for the visual arts at Tufts University, our team works collectively on planning four contemporary exhibitions that center experimental practices engaging social responsibility. These exhibitions serve as a locus point for courses across the University and beyond Tufts at Northeastern, Harvard, Boston College, and Boston University to use as a resource for teaching, tours, and special projects. In tandem with these featured exhibitions, I collaborate with colleagues to plan key artist-led programming that aims to bring together the Tufts University community with Greater Boston publics for workshops, lectures, symposia, and student-led activities. Our exhibitions and programs draw upon collaborations with faculty, staff, and students, and we plan about twenty MFA and BFA exhibitions in our Area exhibitions at SMFA and thesis exhibitions each year. We also work with students to plan individual exhibitions and installations across the SMFA building and amplify opportunities for our Gallery Attendants who want to pursue careers in arts institutions. TUAG is also responsible for caring for and interpreting our permanent art collection of 20th and 21st-century art alongside faculty and students in addition to our collection. We are particularly focused on adding works by artists from historically-marginalized groups to bolster our permanent collection and we consult with an advisory group composed of students, faculty, and community members to undertake acquisitions. And finally, TUAG manages the public art collection on campus and temporary installations. This curricular-based work that I develop with TUAG colleagues is intended to engage in research and scholarship, while also providing avenues for mentorship and professional development for students.
Beyond our direct curricular-based activities, we collaborate with colleagues in the Contemporary Department at the MFA Boston to realize the Juried Student exhibition, Traveling Fellows application cycles and exhibition, and endowed lectures such as the Beckwith and Hale lectures. Working with our Office of Development and Alumni Engagement, we also facilitate the annual Art Sale, for which students and alumni can submit to support student scholarships. Lastly, I work with a small team on the Collective Futures Fund, a granting branch of TUAG for Greater Boston art communities (beyond Tufts, since only alumni can apply), that directly supports collective-based practices and projects in partnership with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. This was more than a few sentences, but I want to emphasize the multiplicitous nature of curatorial work across research, scholarship, public-facing events, collaboration, pedagogy, and artist-centered work!
How did your academic track and non-academic activities influence your career journey?
I pursued a liberal arts education during my undergraduate years at Wake Forest University through a Presidential Scholarship for Voice that allowed me to major in a non-music area. I knew that I wanted to pursue a career in the arts, so I double-majored in English and Art History with a minor in Linguistics. Following undergrad, I worked as a Research Assistant at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and an Archival Intern at The Barnes Foundation exploring various careers in large encyclopedic and global arts museum settings through the generosity of colleagues who shared their experiences with me. I applied to graduate school during that time and attended The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, UK, studying in a highly-specified Masters track focused on strains of Global Conceptualism with Sarah Wilson. The British education system encouraged independent research and risk-taking, so this environment proved formative to me and I began publishing my academic and arts writing work as well, focusing on migratory aesthetics during the fever pitch of the 2014 “migration crisis” that persists to this day under neoliberal regimes. I then began doctoral studies at Bryn Mawr College, working with Professor Homay King and eventually writing a dissertation “Towards a Migratory Aesthetics of Performance Art by Womxn-Identifying Practitioners, 1970–2018,” that offers a survey of ritual-based strategies from practitioners whose identities were shaped by factors of gender and nationality (and liminality), but nevertheless resisted categorization, xenophobia, and nationalisms. My work was supported by national grants such as the ACLS/Luce Foundation and the American Association of University Women in addition to local grants from Bryn Mawr College.
During my graduate years, I worked at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, and then pursued independent curating at artist-run, collegiate, and regional arts institutions across the U.S. such as Oregon Contemporary, Usdan Gallery at Bennington College, Center for Contemporary Art & Culture at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in North Carolina. My curatorial work was supported by grants from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Acción Cultural Española, Ford Family Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, among others. I was also keen to continue academic work, so I prioritized presenting at conferences ranging from the College Art Association to Performance Studies International and the Association for the Studies of the Arts of the Present and publishing in peer-reviewed journals such as Performance Research, ASAP Journal, Antennae, exhibition catalogs, and mainstream arts platforms such as Art Papers, BOMB, Burnaway, and Brooklyn Rail, among others. In these contexts, I could engage in deep dialogue with cultural workers in the contemporary arts field. Curatorial mentors, conversations with artists, and solidarity among cultural workers influenced my curatorial trajectory, providing both moments of formative challenge and caretaking.
What advice would you offer to a student who wants to pursue a career path like yours?
I would advise that students interested in curating contemporary art develop close relationships with peers—these friends and acquaintances will become your colleagues; so, be kind, generous, and productively critical of one another. Also, search for mentors in the fields and positions about which you are curious—these professionals will guide you and usually do so out of passion for the field, so thank them for their service, follow-up with them, and take their advice (most of the time at least!), and pass along what you have learned in the continuing spirit of reciprocity. Be kind, understanding, and curious. Many people who work in the arts and cultural sector rely on gig work, references from friends and strangers, and knowledge sharing. This work can often be precarious and unforgiving if you do not have a strong network, so forge bonds early on and rely on your community. And lastly, curiosity is invaluable—if you do not know something, ask, and ask again, and do your research, and then ask again. Then look into alternatives—around the question, by the question, and details adjacent to the question.
