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Episode 6: Michael Bramwell
54 Plays8 days 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 explore issues of American folk, self-taught, and “outsider” art with Michael Bramwell, an artist, curator, and scholar who recently retired from his role as the Joyce Linde Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
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:
- Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina exhibition at the MFA Boston https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/hear-me-now-the-black-potters-of-old-edgefield-south-carolina
- “The Enslaved Artist Whose Pottery Was an Act of Resistance” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/17/arts/design/-enslaved-potter-david-drake-museum.html
- New Discourses on Folk and Self-Taught Art symposium at the MFA Boston https://www.mfa.org/event/symposium/new-discourses-on-folk-and-self-taught-art
- “MFA Boston Appoints Michael J. Bramwell as Inaugural Joyce Linde Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art” https://mfa.org/press-release/michael-bramwell-folk-art-curator
- Folk Art of the Americas at the MFA Boston https://collections.mfa.org/collections/315158
- “Heard a Voice, Saw a Light: Spiritual Implications of Creative Belief in Black Vernacular Art” by Michael J. Bramwell, essay in The Unfinished Business of Unsettled Things: Art from an African American South https://uncpress.org/book/9781469668529/the-unfinished-business-of-unsettled-things/
- Minnie Evans https://americanart.si.edu/artist/minnie-evans-1466
- Souls Grown Deep https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/
- Gee's Bend quiltmakers https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/gees-bend-quiltmakers
- Joseph E. Yoakum https://www.moma.org/artists/26683
Credits:
- Hosts: Emily C. Casey and R. Ruthie Dibble
- Production Assistant: Katherine White
- Graduate student guest: Reyna Mallory
- Additional research prepared by: Nathan Osborn and the 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)
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Bye!
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.
Meet the Hosts
00:00:25
Speaker
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.
Introducing Michael Bramwell
00:00:39
Speaker
Our guest today is Michael Bramwell, who is the Joyce Lind Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Michael is the second curator we've interviewed from the MFA for this season. The other will be Lucia Abramovich Sanchez. But when we were planning the first season, Emily and I agreed that we also needed to have Michael as a guest.
00:01:01
Speaker
Michael's journey to becoming a curator and his specialty in folk and outsider art are both unusual and mean he has an important and distinctive perspective on curating American art. So Michael, thank you so much for joining us today for this conversation.
Promoting Folk Art at MFA
00:01:16
Speaker
And I'd like to start by asking you to introduce yourself and tell our listeners what you do.
00:01:22
Speaker
Thank you, first of all, for having me for this podcast. I think it's a very important outlet for the public to understand not only what curators do, but to the field of American art. My name is Michael Bramwell. I'm the Joyce Lindy Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. And my role essentially is to put forward the Folk Art Initiative here at the MFA.
00:01:51
Speaker
And what that means essentially is bringing the work into the collection, developing exhibitions around this genre and exposing the public to what we do here and how this art is just as important as other genres of art as well. So that's basically my mission in a nutshell.
00:02:13
Speaker
Thank you for explaining some of those ideas and themes, and we're going to be unpacking some of the terms and artists and kinds of objects related to your curatorial practice over the course of the conversation. And Michael, I wanted to share with you that Nathan Osborne and Rayna Mallory, two of the graduate students from my Museums in America class,
00:02:35
Speaker
helped to prep for this interview. We're really grateful for their work. Reina is here today, as is our graduate production assistant, the purist Kat White. So Reina and Kat, can you say hello and introduce yourselves?
00:02:49
Speaker
Hi, so I am Raina Mallory, and I am completing my first year of my MA here at the University of Kansas, um and I'm super excited to hear the rest of this podcast. And I'm Kat White. As mentioned, I'm the production assistant for the show, and I'm a PhD candidate here at KU, so really looking forward to our conversation today. And Raina and Kat will be asking some of the questions.
00:03:13
Speaker
So Michael, we have a three-part approach in our interviews. We're going to start with questions about your origins and where you came from as a scholar and a curator. And then we're going to spend time talking about some of your current projects and intellectual engagements. And then we'll wrap up with a lightning round and a few concluding questions about where you see yourself in the next few years. So the first of those questions is going to be asked by Reina.
From Artist to Curator
00:03:39
Speaker
Reina, take it away.
00:03:41
Speaker
So you have a varied career as an artist, scholar, and curator. Can you take us back to a moment in your life when you decided that you wanted to be a museum curator? How did you come up with that decision and why? That's a very interesting question and it implies that there was an intentionality. Oftentimes things happen just in the course of being engaged with art and then it comes out in various ways. So I mean by that. I've been an artist for over 25 years and never saw myself as a museum curator.
00:04:20
Speaker
Although I was very much involved with curators from the artistic side, I had to present work for exhibition, so I understood how they thought, I understood their considerations in selecting work and putting it on the wall, and so I understood it from that side.
00:04:40
Speaker
It's just flipped now. Artists approach me with work. And um I think I sort of have a little unique perspective because I understand what it takes to produce a piece of work. And I understand work that's serious and that deserves to be in the museum. So I'm just on the side now of selecting that work to come in. But it's sort of different side of the same coin, artist, curator, and I think one practice informs another.
00:05:12
Speaker
Do you think that there was a sort of a moment in your career where you kind of really realized that you were making that transition, that flip that you're describing from engaging with the art world and museums from one way to another? Or did that sort of happen organically where suddenly you woke up and and realized that you were you were a curator and you were at the MFA Boston now?
00:05:40
Speaker
That's a very interesting question because it really happened and I actually can date it when it happened. I was in the woods of South Carolina walking through a kiln site.
00:05:56
Speaker
looking for shards for the Hear Me Now exhibition that was recently at the MFA. It began at the Met, went to the MFA, and then eventually went to the High Museum. But to answer your question, I think it was like maybe 98 degrees, almost 100 degrees, and we were sweating and we were walking through this, I call it a plantation because really what it was was a pottery plantation. And I realized that the work that I was doing was going to eventually be part of an exhibition.
00:06:33
Speaker
And that's when I realized that, hey, what I'm actually doing is curating this experience for myself first, but then I was going to ultimately curate it for the audience when it when it arrived at the museum. So that's one of the times I actually realized that what I was doing was directly translating into a palpable exhibition at a museum. So yeah.
Hear Me Now Exhibition
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, so Michael, you're referring to this really stunning exhibition called Hear Me Now, The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, that opened in 2023 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and then traveled to MFA Boston, as well as other stops in the United States. ah You were one of the curators who was involved in the show, and you also wrote for its catalog, which is really incredible as well.
00:07:31
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And the show focused on the work of African American potters in the 19th century American South, and particularly those ah from Edgefield County, which was the center of stoneware production in the decades before the Civil War.
00:07:49
Speaker
And I think one really special aspect of the show was it brought together from ah museums and private collections across ah the country several monumental stoneware storage jars made by David Drake, who was an enslaved man and skilled potter.
00:08:05
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um And Dave's jars are significant because he both signed them with his name and also wrote poems on their sides which um give us insight into his own experience in um this period as an individual person as well as an artisan.
00:08:23
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And I think the story you tell about this research you were doing in the woods of South Carolina is so great because it's a great reminder that the work of curators um takes many forms and it's work that's happening outside of the museum as much as in the museum's galleries.
00:08:46
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um I think all of that field work ah in the case of what you're describing, you know literally being in the woods in the out of doors doing that research is not something that that visitors are always aware of when they see the kind of finished polished exhibitions in the gallery space of the museum.
00:09:04
Speaker
That's exactly right. And it was not only the fieldwork component, literally being in the woods, but it was also ah the realization that I needed to interact with collectors, people that had already realized the value of David Drake's ceramic wares and had collected them. And so it was a matter of interacting with them and convincing them that the exhibition was worthy of their loans and so forth. So it was the ah practical field work and it was the interaction with the collectors and dealers and other institutions that all sort of brought it together.
00:09:48
Speaker
And so that work really informed my understanding of what part of what cur curatorial practice had to be in order to be effective. And Michael, speaking of the the market and dealers and collectors, you know, in your title, you have these terms folk and self-taught art.
Redefining Folk and Self-Taught Art
00:10:08
Speaker
And we wondered if you could speak to what they mean to you and how do you engage with those terms in your position?
00:10:16
Speaker
Now that's a really timely question, Ruthie, because on May 23rd, we're going to be having a symposium at the museum called New Discourses on Folk and Self-Taught Art. And the purpose of that symposium is to begin to figure out what folk and self-taught art is supposed to look like in the 21st century.
00:10:43
Speaker
Those words like folk and self-taught art are problematic terms and have been problematic terms that marginalize not only the artist, but marginalize this art. And they carry a lot of baggage with them. I'll give you a brief story. I was interacting with a foundation, a contemporary art foundation, I won't mention, to borrow some of their work.
00:11:12
Speaker
and we were engaged in really productive, positive conversations. And then all of a sudden after maybe two months of conversation, they literally stopped returning my phone calls. And I was like, wow, that's unprofessional. And so I had a friend who who works there and she intimated to me, she said, they dropped the project because they didn't want their contemporary art associated with folk and self-taught art. It devalued it.
00:11:48
Speaker
And that was like aha moment where I realized that the terms themselves carry this negative connotation, whether you call it folky, whether you call it self-taught, which essentially means that you haven't been to school or you lack academic training. So in effect, you don't know what you're really doing. And so what this symposium is going to do is bring together for important people that will begin to address and unpack this notion of what folk and self-taught art can be. And the way we're approaching it is we're bringing together a scholar, Dr. Gabrielle Berlinger, who is an ethnographer, and she is an American Studies scholar. And she's going to look at it from how academics need to write about it. And it really is about
00:12:46
Speaker
canon formation how do we How do we position it within the canon on equal status? We're bringing in Jory Finkel, who is a a writer for the New York Times. And she's going to look at it from a critical perspective. How do our critics write about this genre for the public? Because those are the public facing uh when you read about focus of targeted art in the paper it's the critic that writes the reviews of the exhibition or it's the critic that writes about the genre itself so we need that that critic's perspective. Then we're bringing in Kinkasha Conwell who
00:13:31
Speaker
ah She's emeritus now, and she is the, or was, I should say, the deputy director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is a Smithsonian Institution for over 35 years. So she's going to speak about it from an institutional perspective, how to bring this work into a wider dialogue with other forms of art.
00:13:58
Speaker
And then lastly, we actually have a folk and self-taught artist, quote, Lonnie Holly, who will talk about how he wants to be referred to. And it's interesting, in discussions with him, he doesn't consider himself a folk and self-taught artist. He considers himself an american artist And it's this kind of new dialogue that needs to happen that will, I think, improve the public perception and reception of the genre.
00:14:33
Speaker
Well, I'm really glad to hear about that event. It sounds like a good grouping of people. that The terms are so difficult. i I can never decide which bothers me more, but self-taught, it's like, what what about your the parents? like you know it i I don't like the way it erases the teachings that we all experience outside of academic environments. So I'm excited to see what comes of that event. Yes, yes.
00:15:02
Speaker
And following on that, you've just been talking about some of the work you're doing in terms of public programs and bringing scholars and artists together to consider ideas and issues around the work that you do. um And I'm going to now ask you a little bit about um some other ways that you're engaging with that in your role. so you're the inaugural curator of folk and self-taught art at the MFA. Can you tell us a bit about the history of collecting in this category at the MFA? Were works that sort of fall under this umbrella already in or coming into the collection at the MFA prior to your revival? And then what kind of key acquisitions are you hoping to make to continue to develop and shape the collection?
00:15:53
Speaker
Let's talk about the historical aspects first and then work our way up. So I'm really happy to be working at the MFA and holding this inaugural position because I did not have to develop an interest institutionally. It was already there.
00:16:17
Speaker
they acknowledge the importance of this genre and that's why my position was endowed in order to bring a certain respectability, if you will, being able to curate exhibitions on the same level as other genres of art.
00:16:34
Speaker
So right away, you know my road, if you will, was was paid for me. And so that was a great, great opportunity now to put works forward that I wouldn't have to struggle when I want to make a recommendation, for for example, for an acquisition. or I propose an exhibition. I don't have to fight this hard because everyone gets it. I shouldn't say everyone, but a large portion of the museum gets it and they're willing to support it. In terms of what I've been doing, in terms of my role, I am interested in bringing this genre into the collection. And that's in terms of contemporary folk and self-taught art.
00:17:22
Speaker
But I walked into a wonderful historical collection called the Kerala Collection. And this is essentially a 19th century collection of paintings, drawings, and sculptures. Rich, rich, and very encyclopedically deep.
00:17:42
Speaker
But with any collection, there are always sort of gaps, right? And the gaps in this collection have to do with diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's essentially white, it's essentially male, and it's essentially New England.
00:18:04
Speaker
Right? No art from the African-American South. Very few women artists. And so that's not to say that the collection isn't rich. It's extremely rich. So what we want to do is not get rid of, you know, we don't want to have sort of an iconoclastic gesture and just say, oh, forget about those old things. Let's forget about the weather veins and let's forget about de duct decoys the and let's forget about the carousel figures.
00:18:33
Speaker
No, all of that stuff is really deep, but what we can do now is supplement it to to create a more diverse and a more inclusive collection. And to that end, we've been able to acquire through acquisition a lot of works since I've been here.
00:18:57
Speaker
As a matter of fact, I gave a lecture just before coming on this podcast about the work we acquired by Beverly Buchanan called Four Shacks in the Neighborhood. And it's a great piece. And she exemplifies exactly what were trying to go for. She was trained at Columbia as a public health worker, right? And would go into the backwoods of Georgia to work with her clients. And she didn't consider herself an artist at all. But when she came home in the evening, she would sketch
00:19:34
Speaker
the houses that she visited right and didn't know what she was doing was art and then she began making sculptures of those same houses didn't know what she was doing was art and then by chance she came to back to New York and went to the art students league where she met Romeo Bearden and Norman Lewis, who pointed out to her, wait a minute, what you're really doing is sculpture. What you're really doing is is drawing. And then it gelled for her what she was doing. So we just brought her into the collection. We brought in work by Sam Doyle. We brought in work by contemporary artists who work
00:20:21
Speaker
in the same way as folk and self-taught artists work. In other words, the found object, assemblages, working with non-traditional art materials, looking at the spiritual impulses in art. All of these things work across genres, whether it's contemporary or it's traditional. And so it's my job to see that connection that has absolutely nothing to do with with whether you are academically trained or not. It has to do with your sensibilities. It has to do with what motivates you. It has to do with how you tap into creativity, how you're able to articulate the same concerns that have nothing to do with your schooling or your background.
00:21:10
Speaker
So those are the those some of the things that I've been trying to do since coming into the position. So Michael, building off of that, we wanted to read a quote from your recent essay, which is titled, Heard a Voice, Saw a Light, Spiritual Implications of Creative Belief in Black Vernacular Art.
Southern Black Vernacular Art
00:21:31
Speaker
So we pulled from there this couple sentences that we thought were really interesting.
00:21:35
Speaker
You write, we are witnessing an important moment in American cultural history as Black vernacular art makes its way out of the bayous and big bottoms of Southern experience and into formal institutions and canons of contemporary art. But it is important to ensure that during this fanfare we acknowledge and distinguish the spiritual dimension of this art from secular forms of creative expressions.
00:21:59
Speaker
So we wanted to ask you at the MFA, it seems like you're not just witnessing the sea change, you're participating in it. And we're wondering why is it important to collect Southern art at a New England institution and what kinds of connections do you see between Southern Black folk art and MFA audiences? Well, there's there's definitely a connection because I was just down in North Carolina researching an exhibition on Minnie Evans, which I'll be bringing here in 2025. And it's interesting because she's from North Carolina and was working there all her life, and New England audiences don't know about her.
00:22:44
Speaker
So it's just a matter, everyone's open to it if you show them what it is that she's done, the the beautiful work that that she's ah produced, and the history and the stories behind her art. Just as an aside, she worked for 35 years in a little house outside of a place called Airly Gardens. This was sort of like a botanical gardens that you would pay and go in and enjoy the day. And while she was collecting her tickets, and mind you I said 35 years, collecting her tickets, she had a side hustle. She would do drawings in her little little ticket booth
00:23:32
Speaker
And when she sold the ticket to the garden, she would try to sell a drawing as well. And this is how she, I guess, supplemented her income. But there's thousands and thousands of these rich drawings that have been collected by the Cameron Art Museum that owns her estate now, and many, many other private collectors that I met.
00:23:56
Speaker
because once you meet one, one tells you about someone else, and the next one tells you about someone else. And just the other day, I was on the phone with a filmmaker who is just finishing up a film on MIDI. So this promises to be a great exhibition. But just to answer your question more specifically, Luzzi, I think art from the African American South has been coming out a lot since the Souls Grown Deep Foundation and the Art Transfer Program has positioned this art in major museums from the Met,
00:24:36
Speaker
to the Whitney, to MFA Boston. We've gotten so many wonderful quilts like from Gee's Bend and so forth. So the audience is already primed for it. So it's just a matter of, hey, here's another artist you might not have know the You know, Michael you're right, the souls grown deep foundation is an incredible resource for our listeners, it's a foundation dedicated to promoting the work of black artists from the American South, as well as their communities, and since around 2014 the foundation has been distributing its collection to museums in the United States so really seeding museums um all over, especially in the north, with um really beautiful and lesser known works by Black Southern artists. um They focus on 20th century artists, many of whom are still living, and among those artists are ah the quilters of Gee's Bend, who you just mentioned, um Black women artists like Mary Lee Bendolph, and
00:25:38
Speaker
Laurettes Petaway, who are known for their abstract works of quilted art. And you can find out more about both in our show notes. I'm curious, you, a little bit ago were talking about this kind of key moment in your formation when you were collecting pot shards that became part of this exhibition that you mentioned Hear Me Now, which is a major exhibition about the work of enslaved African-American craftspeople in the 19th century. and um And that's something that you have yourself done a lot of research on. You contributed to that exhibition and um have written about David Drake, one of the ah most well-known enslaved Black potters from this period, as well as other individuals like Thomas Kamara, who is an earlier free Black businessman from the early 19th century.
00:26:33
Speaker
um So there's this aspect of your research and work that's focused on historic craft objects, art made by people of color in the United States. And I'm wondering how, what connections you see between that area of your research and work.
00:26:53
Speaker
and this collecting that you've been describing that's really focused on artists of the 20th century. Is there a relationship between those two? And are you also looking at collecting historic 19th century material that has maybe not been considered within this canon as well into the museum? That's a rich question. I love it. Yes.
00:27:17
Speaker
so So my methodology in terms of curation is what I call trans-historical, meaning that what I try to do is make the connections between earlier work, let's say from the 19th century, and what would that have to do with work ah from the 21st century and through the curatorial practice sort of bridge those those connections? Because I think it was John Henry Clark that said history is always a current affair, meaning that what happens
00:27:53
Speaker
five minutes from now has to do with having years ago. it's It's, you know, history is cyclical. It's it's just not this linear this linear process. So what I'm trying to do is recognize those those synergies and those connections and let them come out in exhibitions or let them come out in scholarship.
00:28:16
Speaker
Also, it's interesting. I was looking at a comorbid jar for acquisition the other day, it was at auction, and it was just a great opportunity to I really wanted it to put it together with our Drake jar, our David the Drake jar, because here you have two different artists, one from New York City, right, and one from South Carolina. They were geographically separated, but they were working in similar ways and affected by similar circumstances.
00:28:52
Speaker
So I guess to round out the question, I'd see connections between old stuff and I see connections with contemporary things and I try to bring them together in the acquisitions I make and as well as the exhibitions I curate.
Spirituality in Art and Museums
00:29:11
Speaker
Michael, I'm thinking about your point about trans-historical connections and this quote thinking about spirituality. like I know that that's an interest of yours and that part of your work is to be bringing to the museum visitor this sense of the spirituality, of certain works of art. What are the strategies that you employ to kind of highlight that spiritual quality of objects in a museum?
00:29:35
Speaker
Recently, I did a lecture called the Devon's lecture. And what it basically had to do with was looking at the ways in which spirituality animates and goes through much of folk and self-taught art, whether it's it's seeing visions or hearing voices,
00:30:03
Speaker
all of All of this has a spiritual root to it. And even even with Thomas Comora, if you think about it, we we know him from decorative arts, right? He produced these these wonderful ceramic pots. But if you just take you know move away from the object-centered approach and look at it from an object-driven approach, much of what he was about was spirituality, right? He even... When he went back to Africa with the Colonization Society, it it wasn't just to relocate and find a way to get away from you know the negative social situation in the United States. He was going there to proselytize the gospel, if you will, on the African continent. So whether you're talking about Comora, whether you're talking about David Drake, who has written on his pots,
00:31:03
Speaker
repent or you will be lost. That's a spiritual concept, right? So you see it in Comora, you see it in Drake, you see it in Minnie Evans, who is famously quoted as saying, God told her to draw or die, right? It animates the whole genre and the lecture was about identifying that in everyone from Howard Finster to who who was the Baptist preacher as well as an artist and and most of his art was about
00:31:39
Speaker
prosteelytizing He's just said, if people like my art and they buy my art, then when they buy it, I can write these quotes on it, these biblical quotes, and then they've heard the gospel, quote, unquote. So I think to answer your question about spirituality, that's a central feature that I try to draw out of these artists rather than, you know, simply talk about, oh, look,
00:32:05
Speaker
you know, that's a wonderful jug that that David Drake made. And it is, it don't get me wrong. But there was a deeper concern that I think we miss when we take this object-centered approach and don't look at the context in which it was produced. Do you feel like um the museum is an effective environment to tell those stories or to explore those dimensions of artists and art objects. um You know, it strikes me that very often religion and spirituality is something that is de-emphasized in the interpretation of art in museums.
00:32:48
Speaker
Even as, you know, if you stroll through the European medieval and Renaissance galleries, you're going to see a lot of religious art, but um in terms of how we talk about art in museum spaces. So I'm wondering if that's something that you see challenges or opportunities in terms of telling those stories in a in a museum space.
00:33:09
Speaker
I love that question because it implies the secular nature of museum spaces and and the art world in general, I think. But I think the museum is a great place to tell those stories. And the reason I say that is because what's already baked in to the museum is this notion of quiet, meditative reverence.
00:33:41
Speaker
Right? That's already built in. When you stand before work of art, you're sort of, you're not chatting, you're just really like looking and saying, oh, how beautiful. And one of the things that Ludwig Wittgenstein said, the famous German philosopher, is that there's no difference between ethics and aesthetics.
00:34:03
Speaker
right? They're one and the same. And so when you stand in a museum, you're already in this quasi reverent posture before works of art. So you you're open and you're susceptible to this higher I guess, form of consciousness anyway, because you've come to the museum to contemplate these aesthetics, these these wonderful aesthetics. And so it's a great opportunity not to proselytize. This is not church, right? This is a cultural institution. But to the extent that we want people to understand what animates these artists,
00:34:50
Speaker
It's important to tell that story. Now, if we want to hear it in pure form, we would go to church. But if we want to hear it in culture, then then we need to we need to talk about it in terms of how aesthetics can you know raise our consciousness and get us to begin to consider things that we don't consider in our everyday life. Because we're we're too busy catching the train and catching the bus or going to school or teaching a class or all of the things that we do in our lives. But when we take time out, you know when we pause and come to a museum,
00:35:29
Speaker
it's It's sort of it's analogous to pausing and going to church on Sunday. It's like stopping our daily routine to to do something higher, if you will. So I think it creates a great space to tell those spiritual stories.
Quick-Fire Questions
00:35:46
Speaker
Thinking about these spaces and how people experience them, we have a series of lightning round questions about curatorial work that we're going to have Kat and Reina ask you. So it should be just like, what comes to mind first? Don't think too hard about it. Just like free association. Yes, exactly. Yes. Kat, do you want to take it away? Yes. So first, what are three words that describe your ideal museum label? The only thought
00:36:20
Speaker
To liberate the mind is the one that leaves it alone. OK. We'll just let that sink in and let it settle in the space. Yeah, I appreciate the free association. So for the next question, it's what is a dream acquisition for you at the MFA Boston? Joseph Yoko.
00:36:47
Speaker
Michael, can you introduce us briefly to the life and art of Joseph Yocum? Joseph Yocum was an interesting character. I can't go too deeply into it, but I can describe his work to you. Yeah. He did these fanciful landscapes. And what he claims is that, and again, I'm not here to judge one way or another, but what he claims is that he's visited all of these landscapes that he's drawn.
00:37:18
Speaker
And the closest we can come to whether that's accurate is that he used to work for the circus, and he traveled with the circus. But just the extent of his drawings, there's no way he could have visited all.
00:37:34
Speaker
all of those landscapes, but I'm not going to be a detractor. I'm just saying I want his work. It's just so expensive now. I mean, it's up there with Bill Traylor. And because people acknowledge the significance of of these drawings, and it's just so beautiful if you can find them or get them. I love that. Thank you for that.
00:37:59
Speaker
All right. And our third lightning round question. If you could ask every visitor to the MFA Boston one feedback question, what would it be? What inspired you about your visit?
00:38:14
Speaker
So great. So my favorite thing about these lightning round questions is that because it's free association, everybody approaches them differently. And so it's not just that you learn about what the different folks we've been able to talk to care about and more about their work. But I i think it it always is bringing up something more than that. So thank you for thank you for playing. Yeah, it shows us how you think, not just what you think. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.
Current and Future Projects
00:38:43
Speaker
So we're wrapping up now. And so I wanted to ask you, Michael, what are you working on right now? What's in the works that you're especially excited about that you can share with us? So three things. The symposium that's coming up on May 23, that's going to be hopefully a field changer in terms of the way we look at the genre. I'm working on the Minnie Evans exhibition for 2025.
00:39:12
Speaker
And right after that will be a major folk and self-taught exhibition called A Joyful Noise Art for the 21st Century. And what makes that a different kind of exhibition? Traditional folk and self-taught art will now be paired with contemporary art.
00:39:32
Speaker
Not by, again, whether you went to school or not, but your approach to materials and your approach to themes, and we'll bring those those two things together. And hopefully that'll create a joyful noise. So Michael, is a joyful noise, is that going to be at like a short term exhibition or a longer term installation? This is an exhibition that will run a year. Great. Okay. This will run a year.
00:39:57
Speaker
Exciting. Well, so our last question for you. It's broad and we like to ask it so that you can kind of say anything that we haven't touched on, but what do you wish people knew about the kind of work you do? Oh, that's an interesting question. What I wish they knew about the work I do.
00:40:16
Speaker
Well, what I'm doing is slowly but surely orienting people to this genre. And the way I do this is, if I could sort of paraphrase Aesop, and that is, art is known by the company it keeps. So if folk and self-taught art is keeping company with traditional art in a museum, then people will come to see it and and value it the same way. It's just not this little kooky off-brand category of art that sits in the lower level of museums, but it's it's on the same level with European-centric art, Eurocentric art, I should say. It's on the same level with contemporary art. So that's what I'm hoping comes out of all of this work, whether it's acquisitions, whether it's exhibitions, whether it's scholarship yeah that people will come away with this notion of inclusion, equity, diversity, and access. Thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation. I feel like I've learned a lot more about how you approach and think about the work that you're doing and you know really excited to see some of these projects you've described that are going to be coming up in the next couple of years.
00:41:46
Speaker
Yeah, I can't wait to see the Minnie Evans show especially, but a joyful noise also sounds just, it's gonna be great, I'm sure. Yeah, thank you.
Career Reflections and Retirement
00:42:04
Speaker
I think that conversation was a great way to end our first season and think more about approaches to folk art within the realm of American art.
00:42:15
Speaker
And I'd love to hear more about what you both ah feel is how Michael is breaking the frame. Thanks, Kat. I um i so enjoyed Michael's interview. um And he just has such a fresh perspective on folk art and folk artists and curating in that realm. And I wanted to highlight as in our breaking the frame moment that I really felt like Michael's background 25 years working as an artist really is key to his
00:42:53
Speaker
a methodology that breaks the frame of traditionally curating American art. I think what he was saying about really understanding and appreciating the hard and serious work that goes into making a work of art and how that informs his curating and his acquisitions is is really powerful and maybe especially so for folk art because so many artists who are categorized under the category of folk art, sometimes we don't even know who the maker was but sometimes we know the maker but we don't have a lot of details about their biography and Michael's ability to really ah mine the the work itself to understand the emotional and physical and expert labor that went into each object is you know it's part of a long tradition of folk art curating but I also think it's something that he does especially well and it's a major standout for him.
00:43:45
Speaker
We also just wanted to mention that since we recorded this interview with Michael, he has retired from his position at the MFA. um I can say from someone who lives in Salem that he'll be missed in the Boston metro area museum world. But I also think that Michael is far from done in terms of his work curating and writing about American art and and American folk art.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And we want to thank our listeners for following along with us this season on Breaking the Frame.
Closing Remarks and Future Episodes
00:44:20
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode. ah We will be recording more in the future. So keep your eye out for a second season that will you know explore other topics related to Breaking the Frame, thinking about museums and American art.
00:44:40
Speaker
For this episode, make sure to check out the link in the episode description to find out more about some of the artists and projects that we talked about today with some visuals.
00:44:55
Speaker
And thanks as always ah to our expert producer, Kat, who was an incredible editor and producer in all ways for this season. And we also want to thank Emily's students at KU who brought such amazing research and curiosity and modes of inquiry to this project. So I look forward to working with you again next season.