15.4 "Profiles" (Fall 2023)

THE SAN JOSÉ MUSEUM OF ART

Written by David E Valdespino Jr. | Photography by Daniel Garcia

(SJMA), founded in 1969 by a group of artists and activists, has long strived to be in touch with the needs of artists and the community. As a leading showcase of modern and contemporary art in the Bay Area, SJMA hosts innovative and compelling exhibitions designed to engage audiences of varying ages and backgrounds. Despite traditional narratives that frame art museums as leisure places for the elite, they aim to serve as community access points into a world that examines contemporary social concepts through the eyes of human experience.

They aim to serve as community access points into a world that examines contemporary social concepts through the eyes of human experience.

LAUREN SCHELL DICKENS:

Chief Curator

The Storyteller

“I volunteered at a local library in high school because I had this idea that I would read every novel starting with the letter A. I didn’t get very far, but that kind of thinking—the false idea that I could work holistically and understand all of it—has taken me a long way in my career. As you get older and live more, you realize you only ever know a part of the puzzle.” This reminiscence from SJMA’s chief curator, Lauren Schell Dickens, speaks to her career, always learning and helping artists and associate curators assemble the pieces of a puzzle that tells a much broader story about their work, a shared history or aspects of modern society. She describes curators as “the connecting point between the artist and audience. Our job is to ask the questions that the audience is thinking so that we can all connect with what the artist is thinking.”

Lauren’s interest in curation began in college when she noticed how inert objects could tell stories and inquired about museums’ role in writing that history. Later, when working with artists, the people who create those objects, she became invested in the artists’ agency in those processes. The core of Lauren’s and most contemporary curators’ work comes from speaking with artists, engaging with ideas, and thinking through what is happening in the world. Through those conversations, specific themes and concepts can arise and suggest a story that needs to be told.

When asked what she might want the community to know about her, she says, “I like working behind the scenes. I hope folks think of the museum as a place where they will learn something, be blown away, or just see something cool. I hope they see themselves or their neighbor in a way that they didn’t before. It’s not really about me.”

NIDHI GANDHI:

Senior Curatorial and AssociatePrograms

The Facilitator

Success in curation occurs when someone walks into an exhibition and comes out seeing an aspect of life through a different lens. This process of evolution can come from the artwork or the captions introducing them. Still, audiences can often benefit from being pulled closer to the exhibition. SJMA’s curatorial and programs associate, Nidhi Gandhi, describes her work as “ideating and building exhibitions and facilitating programs that work directly with artists on workshops, conversations, or performance pieces. Different modalities of interaction help people learn.” While educational programming is not new to SJMA, thinking strategically and holistically about conversations that connect the museum’s collection to the community has become a point of emphasis.

Nidhi recalls, “When I was younger, I really wanted to understand how the brain worked, and I had always been fascinated by art. While pursuing my bachelor’s in neuroscience, I focused on child development. I started volunteering at a local museum, facilitating educational programs.” Her first curatorial project in college was on neuroaesthetics, which explored humans’ perception of abstraction in art. These experiences align with art institutions moving away from the purity of art history that lives in a cultural vacuum composed of white walls that display artworks representative of the artistic canon and toward examining and interpreting art through specific lenses.

Nidhi approaches her work with a sense of openness that she learned from experimentation and the scientific method that allows her to be a caretaker of art and to translate it in a way the community can access. She elaborates, “Most of what we call science is actually a lot of unknowns. In curation, we always start with the artist and the art, which usually leads you to a story to tell. Outdated ideas of art museums as white towers should be torn down for our community.”

JUAN OMAR RODRIGUEZ: Assistant Curator

The Interpreter

Creation and interpretation of art may begin in one’s mind but are also impacted by innumerable external factors. Curators work with artists to guide their vision and help arrange its placement and presentation so audiences can connect. SJMA’s assistant curator, Juan Omar Rodriguez’s bachelor’s degree in neuroscience led him to focus on how humans interpret objects in a museum setting. He explains, “In my studies, I was focusing on sensation and perception, thinking about how people navigate the world using a variety of senses, not just visually or abstractly in mind.”

Juan Omar thinks about how museum spaces can shape behavior. He explains, “There is a tension in seeing things you cannot touch. Thinking about space, not just the artwork itself, is an area I like to occupy in my work.”

As assistant curator, Juan Omar creates exhibitions, shapes SJMA’s permanent collection, and considers what pieces work. He shares, “I consider if a work makes sense within our institutions’ historical context and if we can properly frame it in terms of meaning and interpretation.” Juan Omar also considers history, community, and representation, sharing, “I have a particular commitment to artists of color, queer artists, and artists of minority backgrounds. It’s important to capture their voices when discussing art and thinking of art museums documenting history and collecting artwork for society and the future.”

Juan Omar is also working on localizing the museums’ impact, adding, “Making sure that the museum looks to our community, feels like a responsibility to our neighbors, not just the art world. I’ve always had an interest in trying to integrate more local voices with the work I do. That has mostly taken shape in the way I work with artists. San Jose artists should be able to participate in conversations that resonate globally so they can be viewed as important interlocutors, participants, collaborators.”