Exploring with AAMC and ArtFund
With Carolyn Russo and Mike Tuttle outside the NMAAHC. © Mike Tuttle
Earlier this month I was unbelievably lucky to travel to the USA for 10 days. With the Covid restrictions changing rapidly as my departure got nearer I continue to be amazed and grateful that all went safely and without a hitch. My trip was thanks to a collaboration between the USA’s Association of Art Museum Curators and the UK’s Art Fund. Their ‘Foundation International Engagement Program’ connects a series of UK curators with more senior US mentors.
I have been connected with Carolyn Russo at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (NASM) since February 2020, with the initial funding intended to allow travel to the AAMC conference in Seattle and a visit to Carolyn in Washington DC, both in 2020. Instead, extended funding has allowed us over 18 months of online collaboration to discuss our shared experiences of being the only art curator in a science based institution. With the wider program cohort we hosted an online seminar for the AAMC considering ‘Reshaping Exhibitions in a Socially Distanced World’ in the summer of 2020. A year later, Carolyn and I hosted a ‘Curator Gathering’ to discuss ‘Art across museum fields’ where we were lucky to bring together a range of colleagues to discuss the challenges and opportunities of working in ostensibly non-art museums.
My visit to DC was, in some ways, the culmination of these developments. I spent a series of days talking and visiting with Carolyn. I accompanied her, and a group of NASM trophies, to the National Air Association’s Fall Awards Dinner, and had a wonderful conversation with one awardee about how visits to the NASM as a child inspired his career in the airforce. We spent time in the NASM, which has a major transformation programme underway to redisplay every gallery, and in the stores at the Udvar-Hazy Center, looking at artworks planned for the new displays. Carolyn spoke as part of a fascinating event at the Phillips Collection, looking at the visual culture of the Space Race that inspired the work of Alma Thomas, allowing me also to visit the retrospective exhibition of Thomas’s work.
I also took the opportunity to find inspiration in a number of the Smithsonian Museums. The Portrait Gallery American President’s displays, alongside portraits of those involved in ‘The Struggle for Justice’ was a timely reminder of how to talk about a variety of influential and/or contested historical figures. I was only able to scratch the surface of the African America Museum, but was particularly struck by the current ‘Reckoning’ exhibition of artworks that have provided ‘protest, commentary, escape and perspective for African Americans’.
The Hirshhorn’s Laurie Anderson exhibition ‘The Weather’ was a compelling, exuberant, unnerving, immersive series of new and old works, touching on topics ranging from Covid-19 to the night sky. But I was most inspired by ‘The Futures’ display in the Arts and Industries building for the Smithsonian’s 175th anniversary, using the disparate museum collections to think about the futures we imagined in the past, especially who those ignored, damaged or excluded, and what kinds of technology, social approaches and aesthetics we might look to for a more inspired and united future of our own.
The visit gave me back some much-needed confidence not only in how we might live, and travel, alongside Covid-19 but also in the importance of taking time and space, both physical and mental, to remember why my job is important. Rather than a culmination, I hope the visit proves to be the beginning of ongoing ideas and collaborations.
