CURATORS WE LOVE Ariel Plotek As Curator of Fine Art at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Dr. Ariel Plotek is shaping new audiences’ understandings of the artist as well as the museum’s planned new space. He joined the O’Keeffe after holding a variety of museum and teaching positions, most recently as Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the San Diego Museum of Art. He holds MA and PhD degrees from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and completed his BA at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. However, some of Plotek’s most formative experiences in art happened in the painting studio of his father, Leopold Plotek. “Curators are often a bit disconnected from the idea of making art,” he says. “We see artists as an alien species. We revere them, but we don’t understand them. It was my assumption for a long time that I was going to follow the artist path myself, but I ended up writing about art rather than making it. Our love of art is something my father and I share. I just happen to go to work in an office instead 28
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Photo: Courtesy the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
of a studio.” Evokation: How has your understanding of and relationship with Georgia O’Keeffe’s work changed since you’ve joined the O’Keeffe Museum? Ariel Plotek: My understanding of her aesthetic has really changed since coming to this museum. Looking at her work with Dale Kronkright, Head of Conservation at the museum, has been enlightening. I’ve begun to think of O’Keeffe as a technician, as an experimenter, and as someone whose practice is very consistent, whether she’s working with paint, pastels, watercolor, or drawings with pencil and charcoal. The subtleties of her technical approach fly in the face of the image of artists as spontaneous and impulsive creators. O’Keeffe’s painting practice was anything but frenzied. It was careful and calculated. Evokation: How do you balance introducing new fans to O’Keeffe’s work while continuing to surprise and delight longtime aficionados?
