The Art of Curation is Evolving

As the art world slowly opens up to hosting exhibits and devising innovative ways to make art accessible and safe amid a global pandemic, many art lovers are breathing a sigh of relief. The National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington D.C. is illustrating how art lovers may get their fix in the era of COVID-19. Earlier this year, they reopened the lower gallery area in the West Building to present Degas at the Opera, an exhibition that attracted all the eager art fans in the D.C. Metro area. 

Figure 1. Mollie Berger Salah, curatorial assistant at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., working behind the scenes in the Division of Prints and Drawings.

Mollie Berger Salah, curatorial assistant at the NGA in the Division of Prints and Drawings, sheds light into how her work for the National Gallery has and continues to adapt to the new ways of planning exhibitions and exhibiting art. If you love art, then you’re like me and have likely wondered how exhibits are created and how they come to be so memorable, especially now, and this interview tackles that curiosity.

There is a level of mystery to the behind-the-scenes work at an art exhibit, especially one at one of the most prominent art institutions like NGA. It is Berger Salah’s devoted expertise that guides the artwork selection, space planning, ways of connectivity with the public, and the flow of its presentation that make your visit to the National Gallery beyond worthwhile. 

Figure 2. Gregorio De Ferrari Genoese, 1647 - 1726, Saint Michael and the Rebel Angels, c. 1682, pen and brown ink with brown wash, heightened with white gouache, over traces of black chalk on blue laid paper sheet, National Gallery of Art, Elizabeth White Fund 2018.165.4

1. How long have you been working at NGA?

I have worked at the National Gallery of Art in the Division of Prints and Drawings since July 2014, but I have been working in museums since I was 16. My first museum job was at the Farnsworth Art Museum gift shop in Rockland, Maine. I learned so much there, especially customer service, which comes in handy when I am answering a question from the public or directing a visitor in the museum.

2. Can you describe your role and how you work with current/upcoming exhibits at NGA?

As curatorial assistant for the Division of Prints and Drawings, I get to do a little bit of everything. From researching the collection, including new acquisitions, to tracking the progress of curatorial projects, my to-do list varies day by day. 

For the past couple years I’ve been assisting the Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings with his upcoming exhibition, A Superb Baroque: Art in Genoa 1600-1750, which opens next year. I tracked the checklist of artworks included in the exhibition, corresponded with our co-curators in Italy, and helped find images for the publication. We were two months away from the exhibition opening at the NGA, when we needed to close due to COVID-19. It was disappointing to postpone the exhibition our team worked so tirelessly to execute, but we are all relieved the show will be on view next September.

Of course, everything has changed for all of us since the pandemic began. I never thought I would be working from home, but teleworking allowed me to focus on other projects. Digital content, in particular, has been a new experience for me. I led visitors (virtually, of course) through our Mark Rothko galleries and wrote a post highlighting DC artists for the recently enacted DC Natives Day, which celebrates folks born and raised in DC. 

Figure 3. Berthe Morisot French, 1841 - 1895 The Artist's Sister, Edma, with Her Daughter, Jeanne, 1872 watercolor over graphite on laid paper overall, National Gallery or Art, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection 1970.17.160

3. What are the most enjoyable parts of your job?

Definitely working on exhibitions. Since works on paper are light sensitive, we closely monitor how often they are exposed to light sources. We rely on special exhibitions, which are only open for a few months, to showcase our incredible collection of prints, drawings, and illustrated books. With a collection of over 110,000 works of art on paper, there is a lot to choose from.

4. What advice do you have for someone who wants to work at a museum or gallery as a curator?

My first piece of advice is a practical one: understand and be comfortable with technology. I guarantee you will need to use spreadsheets, project management tools, and databases in a curatorial position. Proficiency, or at least familiarity, with these systems could set you apart from other candidates. There are also loads of free online tutorials, so there are opportunities for you to learn these skills. I use all of these programs, practically daily, and I believe they will only become more common as arts institutions move away from paper files, and towards digital systems.

Secondly, I believe it is imperative that anyone working in a curatorial capacity be able to articulate why their project is important, why it matters. This can be challenging to articulate, but as museums grapple with their role in the broader cultural landscape, I believe museum leadership will ask this question and curators should be able to answer.

Shaping the Wind

Veronica Matiz’s 3D sculptural visions are driven by her curiosity to transform raw elements. The Colombian artist’s fondness for the visual arts came naturally to her in childhood. She explains, “My taste for art started from a very young age, if I remember correctly since I was 6 years old. My mother would drop me off at an aunt's house after school, she was a student at the Faculty of Arts at the National University. She showed me everything she did and let me use her paints and materials, which founded my passion for art.”

Aesthetics

Matiz’s sculptures are composed of geometric shapes that blend seamlessly. Each steel piece complements the previous one to provide that “growing” effect that adds to the gestalt of the sculpture. It is in that repetition of shapes that gives her work a sense of solidity, which is then matched with a color that is as equally striking to the eye. “The aspects that matter the most in my work are light, shape, color and material; it is these elements that help me openly create, and geometry is an essential part. [There is] play and experiment with different angles in a constant search, giving it movement and achieving different shapes in the same sculpture,” she says. 

It is through the motion-like shaping that the sculptures create that airy yet grounded aesthetic to them. Each piece’s center of gravity allows for the sculpture to be built upon piece by piece, which then evokes freely created movement. The finished product at times resembles those organic shapes found in nature and living things.

The artist touches on this aspect, “I started making sculptures with pure geometry, playing with the juxtaposition of form and discovering the wide use of steel sheets. With this cold and masculine material, I managed to create harmonic forms with movement and volume; simulating nature as with butterflies and their great variety of colors and shapes.”

A Deeper Meaning

There is a slight hypnotic element to Matiz’s work. It comes from the way the geometric elements form patterns through repetition. The effect also results in a unique experience for every person. Matiz’s sculptures are a 360° experience and what one sees will depend on where they are standing.

Her work is strong proof of how something simple as a line or curve can be made into something non-static and that evolves. The bright paint colors evoke strong feelings of liveliness, which is indicative of that pull and push view set in motion by each sculpture. Matiz explains, “My evolution can be seen in each of my works, I am always trying to innovate, be it with shape, color, or texture. I always want to put out works that occur to me and seem almost impossible.”

One Last Note

What makes Matiz’s work most enjoyable is the fact that she challenges herself and the viewer to drop assumptions about materials and what is possible through art. She transforms rigid materials, making them appear pliable. Matiz breaks the boundary of what abstract sculpture should look like by making it bold, bendable, and beautiful.

She is currently working on new pieces that will be unveiled next month. “I'm working on new organic shapes, experimenting with colors, and with oxide. I am doing large format, three-dimensional wall sculptures. In September we will see the first results,” she says, and we look forward to it!

For more on the artist’s work, please visit her website.

*Interview translated from Spanish

Today’s poem resembles those seamless sculptural shapes found in Veronica’s work:

Waves

By Louise Townsend Nicholl

One by one upon my shore

    The little waves are laid,

Each one a new and perfect thing

    Which the sea has made.

From that which is forever old

    They come, forever young,

The latest, faintest echoes

    Of the song the sea has sung.

They echo it in whispers.

    I listen ceaselessly,

For fear the echoes die away

    And I should hear the sea.

The Parallel Universe Within

In the surrealist work of Washington D.C. based photographer and artist Don D’marco, the viewer is free to explore life from a subconscious stance. His photographs are created in a collage-like manner resembling fascinating visions you’d find in an alternate reality, a future world, or a scene from an art house film. 

D’marco’s start in the art scene is fairly recent, but he’s already embracing his creative vision. “I found art a couple of years ago, I purchased my first camera in 2017 and it kinda took off from there. I came across the Surrealist Movement after doing a little research, and there was an instant connection. I loved everything about it, the way it takes you to places so wild and unfamiliar blew my mind,” he explains.

The Surrealist Movement began circa 1916 in Europe as the study of that which the eye does not see, which is what makes these works creatively distinct. As André Breton, French writer and one of the fathers of surrealism, stated, that artists should “therefore seek a purely interior model or cease to exist.” An idea that parallels D’marco’s work.

Vision

One of the main focuses in D’marco’s work is humanity. His artistic landscapes relate to everyday experiences that become magnified and more meaningful. In D’marco’s work, we observe individuals who react to their environments, but because these are surrealistic works, the environments are also reacting to the individual.

“I'll take pictures of anything wherever I go, constantly looking for material I might be able to work with. Working on my photos is always a therapeutic and exciting time for me. I can be at home doing absolutely nothing or at my busy job when an idea for a photo comes to mind. I like to just take the simple idea of "things just not making sense" and go from there,” D’marco says.

Composition

D’marco’s clean aesthetic provides a flow for mood-inducing visuals. Just as there is control, there’s also freedom in his work. Body language and positioning tell us about what exists within the subjects’ minds and how they create a reaction to their environment. Most times they seem to be in control of the circumstances and everything else just falls into place engulfing them. But we can see there are moments of a loss of control and consequences, like the man being pulled apart by the car and the woman photographed upside down with white eyes.

Interpretation 

D’marco creates a striking balance of shapes, light, shadow, texture, and surprise elements. It’s an act of taking apart our psyche and understanding it piece by piece, and even when it isn’t meant to be understood, it can be represented in a new way. Be it feelings, thoughts, fears, or anything that can be ambiguous at times. Or as Salvador Dali describes surrealism, “ [it] destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.”

“I would say that art has definitely changed the way I look at the world, so I can imagine I’ll still be working on it when I'm old and gray. I'm excited to keep growing, learning new skills, and meeting new people. Just got a Sears KS film camera so have new material from that coming soon,” D’marco explains.

Final Thoughts 

D’marco understands what it means to be in touch with the self, a skill that makes artists authentic and allows them to express themselves from the soul. Taking apart a vision is only the beginning of understanding. That’s when his work comes in, by creating space to start that thought-related conversation with ourselves and others.

All photos courtesy of the artist. For more on Don D’marco’s work, please visit his website.

Today’s poem is inspired by Don’s mindful vision of oneself, internally and externally.

Keeping Things Whole

BY MARK STRAND

In a field

I am the absence

of field.

This is

always the case.

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

When I walk

I part the air

and always

the air moves in   

to fill the spaces

where my body’s been.

We all have reasons

for moving.

I move

to keep things whole.