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Episode 3: Rebecca Shaykin
107 Plays1 month ago
Breaking the Frame is a podcast featuring interviews that explore how museums and the people who work in them shape American history and culture — past and present. This episode, we speak with Ms. Rebecca Shaykin, who approaches American art through a feminist lens for her work as a Curator at the Jewish Museum in New York City.
To keep up with Breaking the Frame, subscribe or visit our website at zencastr.com/Breaking-the-Frame.
More information about the artworks and topics discussed in this episode:
- The Jewish Museum website https://thejewishmuseum.org/
- Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art exhibition https://thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/edith-halpert-and-the-rise-of-american-art
- Edith Halpert: The Downtown Gallery and the Rise of American Art catalogue https://shop.thejewishmuseum.org/edith-halpert-the-downtown-gallery-and-the-rise-of-american-art
- Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte! Exhibition https://thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/marta-minujin-arte-arte-arte
- “Rocking the Art World at 80: Marta Minujín is about to get her due at a Jewish Museum solo exhibition — her first major show in the United States.” - New York Times article about the Marta Minujín exhibition https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/20/arts/design/argentinian-artist-marta-minujin-exhibition-jewish-museum.html
- Florine Stettheimer https://www.moma.org/artists/5657
- Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston, upcoming exhibition https://thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/trenton-doyle-hancock-confronts-philip-guston
- Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston catalogue https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300278200/draw-them-in-paint-them-out/
- Kali Spitzer Photography https://www.kalispitzer.com/about
Credits:
- Hosts: Emily C. Casey and R. Ruthie Dibble
- Production Assistant: Katherine White
- Additional research prepared by: Luke Chupp and Beatrice Levine, graduate students of the Spring 2024 HA 706/906 Seminar in American Art: American Museums: Race, Class, Labor at the University of Kansas
- Theme music: "Deliberate Thought" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
- Artwork: Designed by Katherine White, featuring a frame (ca. 1849-1858) created by the United States Pottery Company currently in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, available under Creative Commons Zero (CC0)
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:14
Speaker
This is Breaking the Frame, a podcast featuring interviews that explore how museums and the people who work in them shape American history and culture, past and present. I'm Ruthie Dibble, the Robert N. Shapiro Curator of American Decorative Art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. And I'm Emily Casey, Hall Assistant Professor of American Art and Culture at the University of Kansas.
00:00:39
Speaker
Our guest today is Rebecca Shaken, associate curator at the Jewish Museum in New York City. When we were planning our first season of Breaking the Frame, we knew we had to talk to Rebecca. Over the past decade plus, she's done groundbreaking work in the field of American art with an important emphasis on approaching the field through a feminist lens. And she's done most of this work at a fascinating museum where art is a part of a bigger cultural story, the Jewish Museum in New York City.
00:01:07
Speaker
I have to add a
Rebecca's Role and Career Path
00:01:09
Speaker
disclosure. Rebecca has been my dear friend for many years since 2007, when we both started at the Williams College Master's program in the history of art. Hi, Hi, Ruthie. So Rebecca, can you introduce yourself and tell listeners what you do?
00:01:27
Speaker
Sure, yeah, so I'm Rebecca. I'm associate curator at the Jewish Museum, so I work on our exhibitions program and on acquisitions for the Jewish Museum's collection.
00:01:41
Speaker
We also have with us our graduate production assistant, Kat White, who is a doctoral student at KU. Her combined background in journalism and art history makes her the perfect producer and editor for Breaking the Frame, and we have so appreciated all the work that she's done. So Rebecca, she's also going to be asking you some questions.
00:02:02
Speaker
Fantastic. You want to say hi, Kat? Yes, so hi. Super excited to be back behind the mic and joining in for another great conversation. And two of the graduate students in my American Museum seminar this semester at KU, Luke Chup and Beatrice Levin, also provided assistance in preparing for this interview, and we're grateful for their work as well.
00:02:24
Speaker
So Rebecca, we're going to conduct this interview in three parts where we'll start asking you questions about where you came from. Then we'll talk more about where you are right now, and where you've been in the past few years. And then at the end, we'll look to the future and ask you some questions about where you're going next. I love it.
00:02:42
Speaker
So take us back to the beginning. Can you share with us a moment in your life when you decided that you wanted to be a museum curator and um how did you come to that decision and why? Yes, I love that question. For me, the path to setting art history, first of all, is pretty straightforward. I always, growing up,
00:03:09
Speaker
since grade school, I think, and found history classes really challenging unless there were interesting pictures for me to look at in my textbook. And thinking back on it, I
Influences and Curatorial Approach
00:03:22
Speaker
now realized that like every term paper, every essay I had to write in grade school even, I was always writing about art history without really even knowing about it. So If it was a class on medieval European history, I was writing about illuminated manuscripts. If we were doing you know ah European world history, and my paper was about impressionism. So I had a lot of teachers kind of suggesting that maybe I might like to take an art history class before graduating high school. I said, absolutely not. I'm totally uninterested. What are you talking about? but
00:04:02
Speaker
When I arrived at college and I did my undergraduate work at Oberlin, I thought, OK, you know what? I'll give it a shot. I signed up for you know an entry level art history course. um And I think it might have been the very first class I attended. The lights went down and the slide projector went on. And my professor started talking about Michelangelo and Robert Maplethorpe. And I just said, oh, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life.
00:04:31
Speaker
I was just like, it was that simple. and It was, yeah, it was really just an illuminating experience. I just, I wanted to look at pictures and images and objects and learn about them and their histories and how they evolve over time. And so that that just set me on that path immediately to being in this field. And then in terms of museum work, you know, I had to real naivete around it, I would say. ah Kids these days are really motivated to be like hyper professionalized at a young age. For me, I was really just studying art history because i I loved it. I didn't really have any plan about it necessarily. But in my junior year, I did a semester abroad in Paris. um I was studying 19th century French art at the time. Manet was my greatest love.
00:05:29
Speaker
And I read Eunice Lipton's Alias Olympia and was just spending all of my time in museums and traveling around Europe to try to see every show I could and track down all the art I had been learning about and in all of my classes back home. and And that's when it began to occur to me that like, oh, this is a this is a job that people have. There are folks who are putting together these exhibitions and making decisions about what artists get shown and how their work is interpreted. And I think I might want to do that. So yeah, that's when that kind of light bulb went off for me.
00:06:08
Speaker
That's so wonderful. And it just strikes me, I think, that there there are some touch points, I think, for so many of us in our story of like how we came to art history. And ah there's a lot of what you said that kind of reminds me of of some of my own, like the magic of being in the art history classroom in college. And then these moments when you get to have this firsthand contact with art, often in maybe a place that's new or unfamiliar to you, and just how transformative um that can be. Thank you.
00:06:38
Speaker
yeah Kat, do you want to ask your question? Yes. So your curatorial work has been distinguished by methods and subjects related to feminist art history. ah So did you have a formative experience or early experience in a museum or in a classroom that informed your own values about the curatorial work that you do? o I love that. Yeah. So first and foremost, I would say that one of my undergraduate professors was one who really set me on this path and that was Pat Matthews, um again one of my undergraduate professors and advisors at Oberlin. and She's a ah noted feminist art historian and scholar. ah She taught a wonderful class on the history of women artists from about
00:07:26
Speaker
I think 1750 to 1950 ish, and the syllabus very much inspired by or or drawing from the the groundbreaking scholarship of Linda Nachlan and others. And that class was was really important for me because I kind of learned about the canon by studying the parallel path of women beside it um first and foremost, and which was really great. So it was kind of um always my expectation, I guess, that, you know, to always be looking kind of askance or to the side of like what isn't being talked about or the stories that aren't being told. And it's been really amazing because I feel like
00:08:13
Speaker
That was back in the early 2000s. She was teaching us about artists like Elizabeth Vijay Labrun and Artemisia Gentileschi, artists who I feel like nobody was really talking about at the time and have just recently in the last few years have had major, major exhibitions at the Met and um in London at the Tate or at the National Gallery, actually. So it's been it's been really wonderful to kind of come up in this like in this generation after that like first first wave of feminist scholarship and during the second wave of and the feminist movement and and kind of like reap the benefits and real words of that. I guess I would also say that another one of my early influences was and visiting the Jewish Museum as a a kind of young and and budding art historian. I grew up in New York City and had the pleasure and privilege of going to museums often as a child, and either
00:09:11
Speaker
with my family or on school visit. But the Jewish Museum was an institution that I really came to kind of post college. And I know that the Modigliani show that was in 2003 was kind of like this really big groundbreaking moment for the institution. And I saw that show and i I loved it. And then I kept going back.
Challenges and Identity in Curating
00:09:32
Speaker
um It was during a time when they were doing a lot of exhibitions, ah major monographic shows of women artists.
00:09:40
Speaker
and cultural figures. So it was a big show of Eva Hesse's work, Louis Nevelson retrospective, and and also a show about Sarah Bernhardt, the great French actress. and you know A lot of artwork was was made about her and it kind of examined her her life and career um and how she kind of interacted with the arts. So that was also really formative for me. I would say I'm getting to see their program and their um theyre kind of early support of recognizing women artists and their contributions. That's a great segue because our next question was about the Jewish Museum. First, I have to ask you, how many years have you worked at the Jewish Museum for how many years? It is over 13 years now. Yeah.
00:10:33
Speaker
which is kind of amazing. i say I feel like I've now had my like second bat mitzvah and having been there that long. and But yeah, it's been it's been a good long ride.
00:10:45
Speaker
Yeah, I just want to highlight that because you're you're rare a rare specimen in the generation of millennials and that you've been at one institution for so long. And it's it's such an asset for the museum to have someone so early in their careers have so much institutional knowledge already. And I think um suspect that it's also that duration is also shaped your work and the work you can do. When we were preparing for this interview, I realized this similarity between the Jewish Museum where you work, Rebecca, and the P.B.D. Essex Museum where I work, um because both of our museums are now museums of art and culture, um but they didn't start out that way. PEM is the combination of a historical society and a science museum. So we kind of carry that legacy in all of the work that we do with art. And I was looking, and I saw that the Jewish Museum
00:11:39
Speaker
has its origins in the library of a theological seminary. but i hate sure die It sure does. I haven't been there that long to remember this. So I feel like the Jewish Museum kind of like pem maintains this dual focus on art and culture, even though the emphasis is art, there's this broader expansive view.
00:12:00
Speaker
And we wondered how that institutional identity has allowed you to maintain maybe a different set of priorities than you might have at a strictly art museum. Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, so I mean, I was drawn to the Jewish Museum, as I said, because they were doing already this like very strong programming around women artists, and I wanted to be there and to be part of that and to contribute to it as much as I could.
00:12:27
Speaker
Um, but it was also a place where like, I, I felt seen in kind of all facets of my identity too. Like that, the Modigliani show that I mentioned earlier was, was really eyeopening because I feel like there are Jewish artists who are identifiably Jewish, right? Like Marc Chagall and even like our Marx, Mark Rothko too. Like those that we, that are kind of known quantities and Modigliani is kind of this example of of an artist who, and I don't know, it's it's not the first thing that comes to mind. I guess when you think about his work, it's, you know, his paintings are very beautiful and very sexy and and feel very kind of um quintessentially French first and foremost. So it was that kind of like
00:13:18
Speaker
moment where um again like in my undergraduate studies I studied like a lot of like Catholic imagery and it felt like constantly frustrated in my like Renaissance art history classes of being like Are there, are we ever going to talk about any like Jewish iconography or like Jewish art? I knew that Judaica existed. We were, I was studying reliquaries in my medieval classes. It's like, aren't we going to talk about any other religions? Like it just, um, I don't know. It was like a constant thing that was, that bothered me. And, and the Jewish museum was the place that I felt like I was finally getting to see my own like culture and history and, and.
00:13:58
Speaker
heritage and reflected in the and the work that they were doing there. So that that was exciting for me. I don't know if I'm answering your question. Can you remind me? You said it. York, well, my question is really like you have been answering it. I i i would think that that you have had opportunities and ways, the opportunities to do things that are that would be difficult to do at just an art museum, whether it's like- Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Thank you. So right. So what I was going to say was that after graduate school, it was very clear to me that I was interested in issues of identity broadly, right? So gender and sexuality were the things that were kind of maybe forefront of my mind coming out of, coming out of grad school.
00:14:46
Speaker
knowing that I wanted to support women artists and in the curatorial work that I did going forward. And I, for that reason, I went immediately to the Brooklyn Museum, where the Feminist Art Center had just opened in 2007. I was thinking about, like, what are institutions who have a program that I can both learn from and contribute to? Like, that was a place that was really important for me. Like, I just, I wanted to be there. And I had a really great experience working with Katherine Morris, who's also still there and today, ah leading the the Feminist Art Center and getting to work on a number of shows over the course of a year and getting to to dig into those issues of like women artists and these untold stories. And then I you know i i wound up um getting a permanent position at the Jewish Museum and being able to
00:15:40
Speaker
build my way up, as you say, it's it's very rare in our field for people to be able to start at an entry-level position as a curatorial assistant and kind of work your way up the ladder at at one institution. But i I'm so glad and grateful that I've been able to do that in a place, again, where identity is really and the center of our focus. and it i I think often about, and you know, if other opportunities come up,
00:16:09
Speaker
i would want to go and work at other institutions that are more general art museums, you know, encyclopedic in their breath, and exhibitions that tend to be either monographic shows or some sort of, you know, it's thematic exhibition having to do with, you know, a period or a genre of art history. And for me, it's just like, it's not how my mind works and it's not the model that we use at the Jewish Museum. It's actually quite difficult for us to do those kinds of, you know, show about surrealism or a show that's just like simply about abject expressionism. It's it's not, there always has to be some kind of tie or connection to Jewish history or a culture there um or some other kind of aspect of identity.
00:17:00
Speaker
And so I find that very satisfying. I know that that type of kind of maybe more biographically driven art history kind of goes in and out of fashion, you know, over time, but it is a real and mainstay of our program. And I'm fascinated by the figures and their history. It's hard for me to to think about art and in too much of a kind of like philosophical or or abstracted way that isn't tied to like the realities of the artists who are making the work and what their lives were like and you what it says about the culture and and society in which they live.
00:17:38
Speaker
yeah Speaking of which, yeah this is this is a great opportunity to talk to you in more specifics about one of those projects that you worked on.
Exhibition Insights and Audience Engagement
00:17:50
Speaker
So one major exhibition that I think really introduced people to you and your work was the 2019 show you curated at the Jewish Museum called Edith Halper and the Rise of American Art.
00:18:01
Speaker
And this exhibition was pathbreaking, I think, in how it examined the formation of the field of American art, the intersections of art and business, and the influence of artists and gallerists on canons of art history. And that's even before we get into the feminist lens of the show's focus on Halper, a woman an immigrant and a Jewish American person whose work as a dealer and mentor transformed the New York art world and beyond. So just so many dimensions of what you've been talking about in terms of art history and identity, biography, the formation of you know fields of art, all packed into the examination of one person's kind of impact on the art world. So
00:18:49
Speaker
your show and the award-winning catalog I think have become touchstones both for curators and academics in the field of American art. And so we were wondering, were um they the intended audience as you were designed developing this show? Were there other audiences you had in mind as you were kind of envisioning the the story and the installation of the exhibition?
00:19:13
Speaker
oh Yeah, gosh, audiences, what a question, right? it's like when you're i I thought about this a lot as I was writing the books specifically. You can get really in your head when you're when you're writing and your exhibition texts and your books because, like God, this was my first like you know my first big catalog and that I was writing my first big show.
00:19:42
Speaker
and it's a big topic like Halper worked with so many of the key artists of American modernism and I i found myself like wading into this territory that I had i had learned about and you know and had studied in part but not in any like real kind of depth or breadth so I was kind of like learning as I as i went. um Yeah, so as I was i was writing, I was like thinking about all of the you know incredible American scholars who had come before me and wanting to like make sure that my work was up to snuff in that capacity, but then also having to remember that um our books are written very much for a general audience too. And so like I couldn't assume that anybody who was picking up this book would have like
00:20:35
Speaker
any, but but even baseline knowledge about American art um or a history in the early to mid 20th century. So kind of finding a way to balance that kind of needing to do kind of a broad and like general introductory text while also being able to pick up on and and draw from like the top scholarship in your field and so is ah Yeah, it's ah it's a difficult balancing act. But in the end, you know, I'm sitting down to write, it helps for me just to like, tell the story that that I want to hear that like, I would want to read and not to get so overwhelmed by like the many um
00:21:22
Speaker
kind of like potentially critical um audiences or readers that you might be imagining in your head. i'm I'm a very anxious writer. I don't know if that's coming across in what I'm saying here. and It's like very much ah baked into my process. But yeah, I think in the end, like I was trying to write a book that I would hope would be appealing to me and that um just to like think of one one person to write to, not like, not everyone, not like satisfy like all needs and demands, but just like, as if I were sitting down um at a table with you, Ruthie, honestly, and you know, just be like, hey, if I were going to talk to you about my research, like, how would I write that up? and And yeah, so that I think that helps like, keep it readable and keep it manageable. And to get those critical voices out of your head.
00:22:14
Speaker
Yeah, audiences, man. I mean, also thinking again about like the younger generations coming up, right? And like the stories about American art that I knew about and were privy to and wanting to make sure that these kind of alternate histories are also being told. So kind of if there were any moments where I wasn't able to like go as much in depth as I would have liked to at least like kind of planting seeds, I guess, for for other like kind of future scholars to be able to pick up and and run with. Absolutely. I guess sort of as a follow up to this, um you know, I think one of the things that we hope to really highlight with breaking the frame is the ways that ah exhibitions
00:23:05
Speaker
are three-dimensional forms of scholarship themselves. And so as you're talking, i'm I'm wondering, did you see the exhibition as it was during its life on view at the museum as doing something distinct from then the the work that will exist over a kind of different durational period in the catalog? Were there are things that could happen in in the galleries that are harder to capture in that written form? Or was there? What was the relationship between the two? Yeah, I love that question.
00:23:43
Speaker
Yeah, the catalog in this case, especially, I was able to go much deeper in the book than I could go in the show for any number of reasons. I was given a pretty substantial page count. I think actually originally it was back to be a much smaller book, just sort of like a light, like introductory essay and then like lots of pictures and just, you know, pretty book. And as I started to work, it became clear that like, this was going to be like the book. on on Edith Halpert. Of course, following up on Lindsay Pollack's like incredible biography that um she had written that had really inspired me to start on this project to begin with. But yeah, it became like a very like exhaustively researched endeavor that was in the book that could go into avenues that we weren't going to be able to get to in the exhibition and the Jewish Museum.
00:24:37
Speaker
has what I like to call very intimate gallery spaces. We are in a historic home, a mansion on Fifth Avenue that used to belong to the Warburg family. And the galleries that I was allotted for this exhibition used to be the the entertaining spaces for the family. So there are the former conservatory and library and their music room, things like that. So, you know, they're grand, but they're not as sprawling necessarily as a ah show might be at, say, The Matter at MoMA. So I knew I wasn't going to be able to to get every artist that I wanted into the show or every facet and chapter of her career as well. I mean, she worked for, you know,
00:25:24
Speaker
multiple decades, 40 years or so. So it was it was a process really of kind of paring it down and saying like I have four major galleries to work with, what are the what are the main takeaways that I want the public to come away from um with this show to like really kind of hit the highlights there. I think what was really successful, I think what we were able to really capture in the gallery space maybe a bit more than we were able to do in the book, potentially. And I think the part of the installation that I'm proudest of was in the final room. We were able to bring together several pieces that had been in Edith Halper's own personal collection. And we installed them, again, in in kind of an intimate space and kind of give the sense of a ah domestic environment for those works. So much about Edith
00:26:25
Speaker
practice in her whole career was about and making art accessible for people to really live with and to have it in their home. And so giving people that sense of like what it was like for her to live with these objects or what it could have been like if you had been a client or a patron of her gallery to and to be able to go in and and see things and installed in her gallery as they might be in ah in a home and then then take them home with you. So bringing that ah sense of domesticity to light, I think, was a one of the the things that we could do in the show a bit better. And then I think I'd also say that this book, too, I mean, it's really, it's out in the world. It has a life of its own and people might stumble across it
00:27:10
Speaker
any number of libraries or or bookstores. I just heard from ah ah an old friend and colleague of mine. She's like, oh, I just ah saw your Edith Halpert book at the PS1 bookshop, which I was really surprised to hear because I know that bookstore quite well and that museum is a very like very hip contemporary art space and just like a totally different context for encountering this book. and But when you're coming to see the show and it's at the Jewish Museum, the context then for that conversation about American art becomes really grounded in that specific cultural context in a way that like
00:27:55
Speaker
reading the book in your own home or at wherever um doesn't have. And so I think that, to me, kind of like grounding that there became really important yeah for our audiences and for me. That's such a great answer. I had another question that came from like, I think several of us here, I have the book with me in my space and I was admiring it. It will include a a link and a picture of the catalog in the show notes.
00:28:25
Speaker
It's very beautiful. It's ah silver. And some of the text is in this very special pink. And I know this is not always obvious, I think, to people when they go into exhibits, but there are always discussions about color and um choices about wall color, text color,
00:28:44
Speaker
And I'm just curious if there's a story about some of the decisions around the color for the catalog and and the show, especially as we're, I think, still living in the aftermath of the summer of Barbie Pink.
Design Choices in Exhibitions
00:28:58
Speaker
um This particular pink kind of really struck me. So I was wondering if there was a story there. Oh, yes.
00:29:07
Speaker
I had the pleasure of working with Beverly Joel, an incredible graphic designer on this book. So thank you for the compliments and the design. um Yes, the metallic sheen of the cover was something that was really important to me. And we picked up on that in the end papers as well. Edith, in addition to being An incredible saleswoman and and supporter of American art and folk art was also very inspired by and and loved modern design and worked with incredible designers of her day, Donald Dusky, and who was also responsible for the design of um Radio City Music Hall and and worked with the Rockefellers who was, you know, Abby Rockefeller being one of Edith's major clients. So metallic.
00:29:53
Speaker
metallic design, modern design was something that was very present and prominent in a lot of her exhibitions and her gallery spaces. and When she moved to Midtown in 1940, especially, she had this really inventive, very kind of like groundbreaking concept for how the decor in her gallery would be where she covered her walls with a very thin metallic mesh fabric.
00:30:22
Speaker
that went over her wall. So it was, it was, you know, beautiful and shimmery and was a great backdrop for a lot of her art, but also was a really ingenious way of hiding the holes that go from like, you know, putting in nails and and screws and and, you know, having to change out art exhibitions, you know, constantly, you know, week after week. So yeah, that, that kind of interest in metallic touches is something we definitely wanted to pick up on.
00:30:50
Speaker
for the catalog and in our exhibition too, we painted all of the walls and various shades of of gray and had metallic touches and these curtains that surrounded some of our major sculptures as well to kind of give a nod to her her own design sensibilities. And then in terms of this pink, this was quite a conversation. So I'll say that I think Initially, we had been had looked at a number of different color waves, and I think yellow had been our initial first choice. But that the factors that come into play are often quite random. So we had just recently done another catalog where the signature color was yellow over the summer. and That's right. It was um
00:31:34
Speaker
the Leonard Cohen exhibition that we had, amazing, amazing show. um The graphics for that exhibition were yellow and black. So we didn't want to do another like yellow book right after that. So I had suggested a kind of pink. So let's see, we were working on this catalog and the design in like 2018, 2019, that was still pre Barbie. It was more the conversation around pink at that time had to do with millennial pink and hashtag girl bossing and things like that. And so I was, I was thinking of Halpert as being this incredible female entrepreneur and kind of the way that pink had been co-opted and reappropriated by young feminist women of my generation.
00:32:20
Speaker
I think pink can be a very powerful color. I know others had very strong reactions ah to it, and i I did get an earful from some older feminists and in the field who thought the choice was was very reductive and demeaning, but um I love pink.
00:32:37
Speaker
Thank you so much for indulging me and sharing this. i think i just I always love how things that seem innocuous like coloring galleries are always the product of incredibly long discussions and making that visible.
00:32:54
Speaker
But I also love in in your discussion of the metallic and the pink, how this was based on research, you know, you're, again, trying to evoke this sort of spaces and aesthetics of Helpert, but also in making connections between her historic moment and career and present day concerns and how these colorways are wedding the past and present together. So anyway, that's ah just really fantastic insight into an aspect of exhibition design that I think is often experienced by the visitor but maybe not registered as another place where active choices are being made. Yeah, I mean it really again varies institution by institution, but I will say that at the Jewish Museum, particularly under Claudia Gold's tenure as director, longtime director of the Jewish Museum, that she placed a very high priority on design and we've been able to work with some of the best exhibition designers and graphic designers in the field. so
00:33:59
Speaker
thieves are This is often, honestly, like my favorite part of the process is is getting to the design and finding ways to pick up on you know historical attributes of the subject at hand, but you know refreshing them and making them feel really vibrant and new in a 21st century way. Yeah, I'm thinking about Zendaya's theme dressing that's become a cultural phenomenon right now.
00:34:26
Speaker
But curators have been doing that, but dressing up our galleries that way. for This past November, you opened the landmark retrospective exhibition, Marta Menuhin, Arte Arte Arte, at the Jewish Museum.
Curating Feminism and Collaboration
00:34:39
Speaker
It's the first survey exhibition in the US of Marta Menuhin, who's an Argentine artist known for infusing her singular spirit and vision in irreverent and colorful sculptures and performances. And she's been working since the 1960s.
00:34:55
Speaker
This exhibition is is so rich both in Marta Menuhin's work and in the methodology that you brought to curating it, Rebecca. But I wanted to start by pulling a quotation of yours from the New York Times article about the show. I thought we'd read it to you and hear your response and go from there. You said, there's a deep frustration that a generation of women artists have been overlooked. Marta is one of them.
00:35:21
Speaker
As curators, we have an obligation and a commitment to bring unheard, unrecognized, or underrepresented artists into the discussion. So when I read this and I was thinking about interviewing you, I wanted to say that, yes, you've built this powerful career championing women artists and art world leaders. We also wondered and wanted to ask you how is feminism present in your entire curatorial methodology? Because I i think it's reductive to just align like feminism with you know these individual women. So yeah, that was my first question about your most recent show. What a good question. Yeah, goodness. Yes, it's like it's definitely not enough to do like one show about one woman like once every five years.
00:36:14
Speaker
you know over four years or whatever and we're able to to manage. um It is definitely part of the process. It has to be more holistic than that. I have to be, and many of my colleagues are quite mindful of the entire creative team behind the process of making these exhibitions. So you know we talk a lot about you know who are the curators who are working on the shows? Are there women curators who are bringing their like lived experiences and perspectives to the exhibitions? the other like scholars and authors that we engage with and to write about the show or to help us and in our our research endeavors. For Marta's exhibition, you know, there's the added layer of it being a Latin American artist. And though she worked internationally and within New York for quite a bit of time, like trying to think like more broadly and holistically about her career, making sure that we're properly situating her in both her Latin American
00:37:12
Speaker
context as well as in more global art historical narratives. Even just like simple things to going more into the exhibition content itself, ah she, Marta is an artist who worked very collaboratively throughout her career. And so it was really important for me when we're again, trying to give our audiences like kind of signposts like to grab on to because this is an artist who, again, super, super famous in Argentina, but almost entirely unknown here in New York and and in the United States, except for those who are Latin American scholars. So because her work is so unfamiliar to most New York audiences, we wanted to be sure to give people the signposts so they could kind of
00:38:04
Speaker
like wrap their head around like what milieu was she working in like who, where did she kind of fit into the art world that maybe was more familiar. So and when she came to New York in the 1960s, she was very much a part of the vibrant art scene here in New York at the time. um So of course, we talked about her friendship with Andy Warhol, and she did a a major ah performance with him in 1985, and we have the photos from that very prominently displayed in our exhibition. We talk about her relationship with the Lichtenstein's and with Nam June Paik, but and we also wanted to be sure to highlight her friendships and collaborations with women artists. So, for example, like in our exhibition text and also like every time I give tours of the show,
00:38:54
Speaker
I was always ah sure to point out that, for example, Marta's really like breakout moment very early in her career was when she developed these ah incredibly vibrant and inventive soft sculptures made out of mattresses that she painted with these incredible and fluorescent stripes.
00:39:15
Speaker
and And it turns out that and she kind of alighted on that scheme when she was living in Paris in the early 1960s and had become friends with Niki de Saint-Paul. And so she was already working. nicki just so awake Well, you know that and I and may or may not have written my thesis on her a little bit in grad school. but ah Marta ah was friends with Nikki and she was already working with mattress forms, but it was Nikki who really encouraged her to kind of punch up the colors a bit. She was actually working with like discarded and soiled mattresses, which were like incredibly like gritty and had and kind of um overly kind of like sick feeling to them. I mean, some of them were like literally discarded mattresses from hospitals. So the connotations were
00:40:06
Speaker
became quite different when she shifted over it to this kind of brighter, happier, poppier kind of mode. And it was Nikki who had really like gotten her there and and and helped make her a star. So I i i love to highlight those moments of like these conversations between women and how they helped to to build build each other up and and further each other's legacies. So and that became really important to me.
00:40:34
Speaker
And if i I didn't say this earlier i' than talking about not just the curatorial team behind the endeavors, but also the creative team as well. So and for this project, we worked, um our exhibition designer was Galia Salomonoff, who, again, an incredible exhibition designer. We've worked with ah many times at the museum and a native Argentinian herself, so someone who grew up with Marge's work and knew it intimately.
00:41:02
Speaker
and So yeah, having that kind of resonance there. I love that. I think so often like. I think of carrying feminism into the workspace as thinking in a kind of ecological mindset about relationships and interconnectedness. And I know you do that so well in your work and just drilling down into that a little more. i Could you talk a little bit about what it was like to collaborate with Marta on this project and what are the differences between working with your staff at the museum and working with a living artist?
Working with Living Artists
00:41:39
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, everybody has different personalities, um you know. ah Yeah, for me, this was my first major project working with a living artist, and it was it was very different from working on the Halpert project, which was very much um communing with somebody's spirit and spending a lot of time in their archives, which had been, their papers were meticulously kept, and I was just like,
00:42:09
Speaker
you know and yeah in the archives of American art, like digging around in there for four or five years or so. and So difficult in a different way. um where ah When you're working with a living artist, you have to really relinquish, I think, a lot more of your own steps of control but over things. and you know Martha is is a star. She's an icon, and she has like very specific demands.
00:42:39
Speaker
about her work and how she wants it to be shown. So being able to keep an open mind and stay flexible. And, um you know, we had some ah very last minute changes and to be made in the gallery according to her specifications. And, you know, you just you want to be open to it. and Yeah, and i I can see that. Yeah, it must have been really um exciting. But also, yeah, like you have this person you're working with, who's like their word is the last word. um Yeah, that's, I can see that carrying you into and the whole institution into really exciting places. But that's also could be difficult at times. so
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it can be. But again, like, I mean, every artist is different. And i've i yeah I'm also working with other artists now who, you know, it's a it's a much, I would say maybe more fluid process, potentially. yeah um But yeah,
00:43:35
Speaker
We are moving into the end of our interview. my And so this is the rapid fire portion.
Rapid-fire Questions on Curatorial Preferences
00:43:42
Speaker
We're going to have a lightning round where Kat is going to ask you questions that we really want under one minute answers to. So like first thing that comes to your mind. And um I think this will be really fun. So Kat, over to you. All right. So what are three words that describe your ideal museum label?
00:44:06
Speaker
Hmm. I love that. Pithy. Hmm. I think Rebecca's looking at a bookshelf right now, like Florence. Well, I am, but I'm trying. This is not one word I'm trying to, uh, I'm going to say this as one word, which is large print.
00:44:31
Speaker
Um, and, uh, maybe witty. I like it. All right, lightning round two. What is a dream acquisition for you at the Jewish Museum? Florian Stadheimer. Yeah. this And if you could ask every visitor to the Jewish Museum one feedback question, what would it be?
00:45:11
Speaker
I'm not lightning quick, very clearly. um Yeah, I guess I would ask what their favorite piece was in the show. Very good. Yeah. Thank you so much for being game. And I think I'm realizing one of the things that's going to be fun for us as we do these interviews is everybody is responding differently to the lightning round format. So that's super fun. um So Rebecca, as we start to wrap up, can you share with us what are you most excited to be working on right now?
Upcoming Projects and Expansive Role
00:45:42
Speaker
me yay and Well, I am working on a really wonderful project with another contemporary artist Trenton Doyle Hancock, that's opening up in the fall of this year. ah It's an exhibition that ae features his work alongside Philip Guston, who has been a long time inspiration for for Tenton's own practice. and And it's an exhibition that is going to delve into both of the artists' and interests in tackling the legacy of white supremacy in their art, but in ways that are not just really emotionally raw, but also deeply humorous. So yeah, it'll be a really great moment, I think, for us to
00:46:37
Speaker
be thinking about the ways that Black and Jewish artists both have used comedy to confront things that are fire maybe not so great about American life. Yeah, so that's the the project that I'm working on now. Most most of my energy is when we're not working on acquisitions and building the collection.
00:47:00
Speaker
I cannot wait for this show, Rebecca. um And so for our last question, not it's a really open-ended meant to give you a chance to say anything that may not have come up earlier. But we ask, what do you wish people knew about the kind of work you do as a curator that maybe the average visitor to a museum might not see or be aware of? Yeah. I mean, I think that when people hear that I work at the Jewish Museum, and if they're not familiar with
00:47:35
Speaker
ah my exhibitions necessarily. I think they the feeling would be that I maybe specialize specifically in Jewish artists or in art that it has particular Jewish themes or content, um maybe even tipping over into working on Judaica. But it's really, it's much more expansive than that. And I'd say I have learned ah so much um working at the Jewish Museum over this past a decade and and change about kind of depth and breadth of Jewish experience and expression and you Jewish communities, um both here in New York and abroad, particularly in the last three years, we've had some really intensive conversations around um
00:48:29
Speaker
like casting a ah wider net and looking at artists that have not just Jewish backgrounds but come from you know any variety of mixed cultural ah heritage and So, you know, for example, this past year, we acquired some some of the first works in the collection, certainly and by a living artist now who is both Jewish, indigenous, and and queer. Yeah. Oh, and what's the name of the artist, the indigenous queer Jewish artist? Yeah, Kaylee Spitzer. Okay, we're gonna have to look around. Yeah, she's an amazing, amazing photographer, drawing on the the legacy of
00:49:12
Speaker
tintype photography and repurposing that, taking control of that narrative and and representing her various communities in the way they actually want to be seen. That's amazing. Right. So like looking at many different intersections of identity and how that plays out in art and how that can broaden and expand um our our collections, our histories, our art historical canon.
00:49:41
Speaker
That's such a great way to to end because it's really, I think, describing both what you're doing right now and where you hope to take the work that you do in the future yeah as both an individual and this person embedded in this really important institution, museum. Yeah. I can't wait to see where it goes. Me too. Yeah. Thank you so much, Rebecca. This has been really wonderful. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. We've loved hearing from you. And I'm really excited to see how your answers in our conversation with you relate to our other interview subjects, I think.
Reflections on Feminism and Identity Themes
00:50:17
Speaker
It's a great addition. So thanks for your time. Yeah, thank you.
00:50:33
Speaker
So looking back on our conversation with Rebecca, I really enjoyed learning a bit about some of these behind the scenes elements of exhibitions. And I wanted to hear what do you all think is a way that she's breaking the frame? Absolutely, Kat. I totally agree with you that getting some insight into her practice really expanded my appreciation for the projects that she's worked on at the Jewish Museum.
00:51:03
Speaker
And when Ruthie and I were thinking about her interview, ah the thing that really stood out to me in terms of how she's breaking the frame has to do with that practice you know she talked about.
00:51:14
Speaker
how her commitments to feminism are not just about featuring women subjects, whether they're artists or dealers, but is really a part of her practice, how she engages with her colleagues, how she conceives of ah of a project and collaborates with others. um So that feminist methodology and bringing that into the museum space is something that really struck me.
00:51:41
Speaker
And then a little bit building out of that was this idea, another way that she's breaking the frame, is just how she handles ideas around ah personal and cultural identity in her projects.
00:51:55
Speaker
um Her exhibitions explore ideas about someone's identity in nuanced ways that celebrate the individual, but also situate them in a larger social and cultural context. um And I think that in doing so, she's breaking the frame by really challenging us to look in new places for um the the people who are defining what American art is in the past, as well as in the present.
00:52:25
Speaker
Well, thanks listeners for tuning into our second interview episode and this one with the delightful Rebecca Shaken. Stay tuned for our next interview and follow the link in the episode description for more visuals and information about Rebecca Shaken's work.
00:52:43
Speaker
And we want to give a big shout out to our producer, KU graduate student Kat White for everything she did ah to make today's episode possible, as well as the graduate students who participated in preparing for our interview. Thank you so much, you guys.