Growing Up in the Art World

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Growing up in a family of artists in Philadelphia and frequently visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art taught me how to look at art, work with artists, and understand how to communicate about art from an early age. However, I never thought I would be either an artist or a professional in the field.

Art History came to me in college and it all took off from there. Never knowing quite what was around the next corner professionally has served me well as I jumped into graduate school in San Francisco immediately after college, accepted a position running a small gallery in SF, did a summer internship in Colorado, moved to Providence RI for my first full time job, helped start a recurring temporary public art project in Philadelphia, and then most recently moved to Cleveland to continue my climb up the Museum ladder. It's been, and continues to be quite an adventure, but it's all centered around working closely with artists, curators, writers, ideas, and the ever evolving exhibition format to produce knowledge, build community, and hopefully add something interesting to the world.

My work has taken me around the world, not as far as I'd like though, and has included a great deal of writing for magazines and publications, curating exhibitions of various sizes, organizing programs and events, and conducting interviews with artists and creatives. Here are a few images from my work that give you a sense of what my world is like.

• Cinematic Moments, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2013)

• Terry Adkins, Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia, City Hall Courtyard (2015)

• Thank you speech for the opening of the Monument Lab Project (2015)

Right now I work at Cleveland’s MOCA (^ in that building)

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While my work right now is focused on producing and curating relatively traditional museum exhibitions, I've worked to create shows that exist in all kinds of places and contexts that include screenings, events, and performances for the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA), RISD Museum, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, Penn Institute for Urban Research, Kadist Art Foundation, Oakland Museum of California, Aspen Art Museum, Alter Space Gallery, Triple Base Gallery, and The Luggage Store Gallery. Additionally I write for Daily Serving, Hyperallergic, Studio International, and Art Practical and has written for the RISD Museum, Providence College Galleries, The Exhibitionist, San Francisco Arts Quarterly, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, Kadist Art Foundation, The Stolbun Collection LLC, California College of the Arts' Glance Magazine, and Alternative Apparel.

Still, the future might hold many possibilities for me as a curator, but right now I'm chiefly interested in how exhibitions can build relationships and lasting networks and systems of knowledge. For me this means that an exhibition can be a dinner, a meeting, a symposium, screening, lecture, performance, play, single artwork presentation, online, or in a home. Now this isn't a new idea, and it certainly isn't mine (see Maria Lind).

The list goes on and on, and while it isn't so much that I'm interested in working in new and unexplored ways, it's more that I think large scale exhibitions in museums and institutions can be tremendously costly, time consuming, and can lack basic connectivity to actual people and places. There is a middle ground somewhere and I hope to find it, here, and in my work.

Outside the Gallery and into Steemit

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Here are a few links to things I've done outside of the gallery to give you an idea of where things might go.

• Online Exhibition for the RISD Museum: http://risdmuseum.org/pages/raidthedatabase_nataljakent

• Experimental Studio Seminar at the RISD Museum: http://www.a-willbrown.com/#/raqs-marginalia/

• One Day Research Day at the Luggage Store Gallery: http://www.luggagestoregallery.org/2011/12/re-present-a-research-day-at-the-luggage-store-gallery-11am-530pm/

Let's explore where exhibitions and programs can take us and how Steemit can be a major force in creating new content and supporting ideas. My blogging will start with some history of the exhibition, at least through the last few hundred years, and continue with interesting examples of projects and exhibitions happening today.

Looking Forward to reimagining places and spaces for contemporary art.

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