The popular overuse of the term “curator” has broadened — some might say diluted — the word’s context to the point where many have forgotten the traditional meaning. Blogs, shopping lists and dinner party menus can be curated. But professional curators have a very important traditional role within our cultural institutions.
In museums, curators of fine art and historic objects have the significant responsibility of creating narratives for public consumption. They research, educate, collect and advocate in an age when those skills are crucially important — our need to contextualize and prioritize the boundless amount of information at our fingertips matters perhaps more than it ever has.
To serve those ends and to fill some gaps in leadership for its encyclopedic collection, the Cincinnati Art Museum recently added three new curators to its previously diminished group, reduced to just five after Curator of Photography Brian Sholis left last fall after having served just three years.
Nathaniel M. Stein has replaced Sholis as associate curator of photography; Peter Jonathan Bell, associate curator of European paintings, sculpture and drawings, takes the position vacated by Esther Bell (no relation); and, owing largely to the recently announced $11.75 million Alice Bimel Endowment for Asian Art — which will focus on growing the collections from South Asia, Greater Iran and Afghanistan — Ainsley M. Cameron comes on board as curator of South Asian art, Islamic art and antiquities.
In a recent sit-down interview at the museum, the three new curators chatted with CityBeat about their first impressions of the city, how working at a mid-sized institution differs from large-scale museums and their views on the public’s current fascination with the term “curator.”
Meet and Greet
Stein was the Horace W. Goldsmith fellow in photography at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he organized numerous exhibitions, including some on contemporary photographers working in or about South Asia, among many other projects. While he focused on contemporary photography, his interest in the medium’s early history is keen — his doctoral dissertation was on photography in 19th-century India.
Bell comes from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he was assistant curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. There, he had been responsible for Italian and Spanish sculpture, ceramics and glass and European medals.
Cameron was most recently the Ira Brind and Stacey Spector assistant curator of South Asian art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where one of her projects was the exhibition and catalog for Drawn from Courtly India: The Conley Harris and Howard Truelove Collection. She previously had curatorial positions at the British Library, the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Stein and Cameron, who are married, took their first trip to Cincinnati when Stein was asked to interview for Sholis’ former position in February. “It was actually an amazing discovery for me,” Stein says. “Whatever preconceived notions one has about the Midwest, I just thought the city was beautiful and there’s just so much going on here. So it’s really exciting.”
Cameron shared that impression, albeit from a slightly different angle. “It was lovely,” she says. “I was really captivated by the architecture and the hills. I’m Canadian, so I feel a sort of affinity with the Midwest. I grew up in Calgary, Alberta, so it makes sense to me.”
“I’ve experienced a really open and welcoming atmosphere here,” she continues. “It’s just been really lovely to have that experience and I’m excited about what we can accomplish.”
This is actually the second time Cameron and Stein have found jobs at the same museum — they worked together at the Philadelphia Museum of Art — after meeting through mutual interests in South Asia.
“(Finding) two interesting jobs in the same city is almost impossible,” Stein says. Their shared interest in South Asia was a plus to the Cincinnati Art Museum.
“One of the reasons (Museum Director Cameron Kitchin) and others in the institution were interested in me as a candidate was that I do have expertise in South Asian art,” Stein says. “They knew, although I didn’t know at the time, that the Bimel Endowment was happening and hadn’t been announced yet. So I think one of their interests in me was that I could help them with that.”
Cameron picks up her partner’s train of thought. “They just saw (hiring the two curators together) as an incredible opportunity,” she says.
They went through separate rounds of interviews. Stein was hired in late April and Cameron in early May.
Unlike the other two new hires, Bell was no stranger to Cincinnati when he came for the interview. “I had visited before interviewing,” he says. “My wife has family in the area and recently her parents retired and moved back here, near the city. So I had started to get to know Cincinnati on maybe two visits before this opportunity came up and to really admire the museum. So it was a great thing to see this position become available.”
In Cincinnati, however, there will be the issue of getting used to a smaller museum for all three.
“That can be a good thing. It’s a different, regional culture at smaller institutions where everybody knows each other,” Stein says. “To touch base with somebody, they’re at a desk next door. It’s not a major process to get to the person who might deal with an issue. That’s nice.”
At the Met, Bell was one of 10 curators in the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department. Because Bell’s area of concentration at the Met was so specific, moving to a smaller institution will allow him — as well as Cameron and Stein in their respective departments — to pursue a broader base of scholarship.
“Ultimately, this benefits our audiences because we’re able to pull together different areas of creative production and make connections historically and across cultures,” he says.
All three are hitting the ground running, with Cameron already having negotiated a brand-new acquisition by contemporary Pakistani-American artist Anila Quayyum Agha, “All the Flowers are for Me (Red),” and a corresponding exhibition of it that opened within a month of her hiring. Meanwhile, Hou-mei Sung remains on Cincinnati Art Museum’s staff as curator of Asian art, a position she has filled since 2002.
“I think she was excited in a lot of ways that she will be able to concentrate on her area of specialty and have someone else come in to help with the rest of the collection,” Cameron says.
Explaining Bell’s upcoming duties, museum director Kitchin said in a phone conversation that his predecessor, Esther Bell, left the museum several years ago with a “pipeline of projects” in place, including the popular recent Van Gogh: Into the Undergrowth exhibition. So, Kitchin explains, the newly arrived Bell “steps into an advantageous position to complete those.”
During our conversation, Bell confirms that there are projects in place that he’ll have to oversee before his own projects come to fruition. But, he adds, “Coming in as new representatives of the areas, we also need time to understand the collections and let the ideas come from the collections to a certain degree.”
Is Three Enough?
Will the Cincinnati Art Museum still be looking for more curators, or will eight be enough? In addition to Stein, Bell and Cameron, the museum has on staff Cynthia Amnéus, chief curator and curator of fashion arts and textiles; Julie Aronson, curator of American paintings, sculpture and drawings; Amy Miller Dehan, curator of decorative arts and design; and Kristin Spangenberg, curator of prints. (There are also three curatorial assistants.)
The museum’s 67,000 objects encompass no less than a dozen different areas of concentration, including such fields as African Art, Contemporary, Musical Instruments and Native American that are not represented by full-time curators. The museum contracted out curating for the recent reinstallation of the African Art gallery, inviting Nichole Bridges, associate curator for African art at the Saint Louis Art Museum, and local scholar William Hommel to reconsider and reframe the strengths of the collection.
While the museum did hire exhibition-specific scholarship, the lack of a full-time curator for the African collection might warrant some concern about relying too heavily on outside contractors. For example, what about curatorship in the Contemporary art collection?
While Contemporary art is of critical importance to understanding our times, the museum hasn’t replaced its last curator, Jessica Flores Garcia, who left in 2012. The position has been largely contracted out on a project basis to Matt Distel, whose full-time position now is as exhibitions director at The Carnegie in Covington.
According to Kitchin, the museum’s current curatorial lineup is “a powerhouse” and “our bench of curators right now is complete.” He also cites the example of Cameron’s use of the Bimel Endowment to purchase the piece by Agha as an alternative path for acquiring more Contemporary art.
“Adding a curator who specializes in South Asian art from antiquities to Contemporary encompasses a wide variety of art forms,” he says.
When there are Contemporary artists whose areas aren’t covered by curators on staff, the museum makes other short-term arrangements. The director himself, along with a team from the Switzerland-based nonprofit LUMA Foundation, curated the current seven-screen film installation from South African Contemporary artist William Kentridge, More Sweetly Play the Dance. Kitchin says the museum is “active” with guest/adjunct curators, and that this is a “smart practice” for museums that attempt to be encyclopedic but not so large as to warrant a full-time position.
“It represents a strength in areas when we need it and where we need it,” he says.
Stein agrees, at least in his experience working in larger museums. “There’s always areas of a collection for a museum with an encyclopedic collection that don’t have a dedicated expert, and other people in the field are sort of covering,” he says. “I think that’s fairly common.”
What’s in a Name?
There’s much at stake right now in being a museum curator in America. On one hand, there’s a responsibility not just to the collection and the institution, but also to the public at large to educate about how diverse and varied the history of art is. Curators have a lot of eyeballs watching them to see how they perform their cultural responsibility — that is to not leave anyone out or misrepresent them when acquiring objects or staging exhibitions.
On the other hand, the word “curator” has become trendy — mixologists, DJs and boutique stylists are now calling themselves curators. Has the combination of a populist de-skilling of the word raised the stakes for those who are true professional curators? How do Cincinnati’s new curators intend to address these issues?
“As a curator of South Asian and Islamic art, I’m representing religious and cultural objects to a larger public,” Cameron says. “So I’ve always felt that responsibility to the countries and cultures that I represent. That’s always been a large part of my curatorial practice.
“(The job) is also being able to educate our visitors to the other areas of the world, to inform and enlighten and also have them experience and appreciate art forms that may be unfamiliar,” she continues. “I try to break down this artificial barrier through interpretation, placement and looking at collections. I’ve always felt that’s my responsibility.”
Stein finds himself with mixed feelings about the newfound hipness of his job title.
“It’s interesting the way that people have really fastened onto the term ‘curator’ recently,” he says. “I feel it’s something to do with how much of a cacophony of information there is now. People sense the value of having someone say, ‘This is important and this isn’t.’"
“It is annoying in some sense, in that it leaves off a lot of what we actually do,” he says. “But in a retrograde way, (it’s) important to have someone who knows where we can look to get to the stuff that we need that is generative to us culturally. So, when possible, I like to think of it as a compliment.”
Ultimately, curators are the temporary custodians of cultural artifacts. The collections themselves will (hopefully) outlive every one of the institution’s current employees, so the long game is to ensure the maintenance and scholarship of each one.
As Cameron attests, “Being a curator involves collection care, research, scholarly publications. It’s so much more than just placing objects in a gallery.”
Bell interjects: “Although that’s the fun part.”
