The first phase of my curatorial career primarily took place at a single museum, Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, Tennessee. It began with an unpaid internship in 1992. By 2005, I was Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and had received a Warhol Grant for my contemporary art programs. For much of this time, I was surrounded by enthusiastic, smart people – this ran the gamut from Senior Curators to Preparators to the maintenance staff (which included young, talented philosophers, computer programmers, visual artists, and musicians). It was a nuanced, hands-on education about how museums operate and how to make exhibitions.
I often curated solo shows at Cheekwood, but I also created original permanent collection exhibitions, and thematic, group exhibitions, which consisted mostly of video and new media works. I soon learned that, for me, the most rewarding aspect of curating was working with artists. They included: Lucky DeBellevue, Roe Ethridge, Kerry James Marshall, Emily Jacir, Project Alabama, Robert Ryman, Cheyney Thompson, and Stephen Vitiello. After curating more than 70 exhibitions at a single venue, I felt it was time to move on. I had grown up in Nashville, had owned a house, and had raised two kids (and three pets) there. But, after a one-year post working at an artist residency program in Charlotte, North Carolina, it became obvious that curating is where my passion lies. Returning to school for my MA seemed like the next logical step.
I, consequently, applied and was accepted into Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies, receiving my Masters in 2008. School allowed the time and encouragement to think deeply about the histories and potentiality of curating. Additionally, the feedback and friendships of my classmates were, and still are, invaluable. Shortly after graduating, I moved to Connecticut as the Director of Visual Arts at the Westport Arts Center. This small, under-the-radar art center (about one hour from NYC) was seemingly positioned to be an exciting platform for exploring ways to connect local qualities with larger phenomena in contemporary art. I curated three exhibitions with this in mind until the Center decided to return to a community center model that was not in synch with my strengths or interests. I then was asked to curate at the Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, Connecticut, where I reinstalled more than 300 objects from their permanent collection into thematic mini-exhibitions and created two original exhibitions in the gallery: "In the company of..." and "It's for you," Conceptual Art and the Telephone. I am currently the Creative Director of Franklin Street Works, a not-for-profit contemporary art space in Stamford, Connecticut.
Over the past three years, other projects have included freelance curating, commissioned catalog essays, journalistic projects, and some archiving. I worked with Fluxus founding member Alison Knowles and musician/photographer Chris Stein (Blondie) on archiving their photographs and documents. I also curated freelance exhibitions in New York, Miami and Springfield, Oregon. Published essays include texts on the work of Anthony Goicolea (U.S.) for Aspect Magazine, Liliana Porter (Argentina) for Leo Fortuna Gallery, Mads Lynnerup (Denmark) for Baer Ridgway Exhibitions, and Gregor Kregar (New Zealand) for Tin Sheds Gallery at the University of Sydney. Journalistic writing involved reviews for ArtPapers and radio stories for Nashville Public Radio and Voice of America.