Elena Ketelsen González

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. It took place in June 2023.

GM: What was your path to your current career, as well as your job at MoMA PS1?

EKG: I was born in San José, Costa Rica, and migrated to Southern California at a young age, going back and forth between the two until I went to college. In Costa Rica, there were so many artists in my family, and my mom used to take me to see their student work at the University of Costa Rica. I would also spend time with my aunt at the art center where she gave classes, organizing and cleaning materials, and helping around the studio in exchange for lessons In California, I grew up in a working-class immigrant neighborhood, where my father was always involved in grassroots organizing around education and the environment. As a young child, he would take me with him when he worked the census, and I would help translate. It wasn’t until I was in undergrad and obtained a work-study job at the University art gallery that I learned for the first time what a curator did, and I remember being so excited that I could spend time with art and the public as a career. After college, I was recruited by Teach for America to teach in a dual-language program at a public school in East Harlem, and I jumped at the opportunity because they offered to pay for me to relocate to NYC and fund my master’s degree. I taught in the DOE for 4 years before finding my way back to museums, where I worked as a freelance educator for a few years before getting a full-time job in the Education Department of the Whitney Museum. That was incredible because I got to see how a large institution operates while being immersed in their history of American art. While there I built a program called Tours for Immigrant Families, where I worked with community organizations to bring in Spanish-speaking families to experience the museum Marcela Guerrero had just been hired and curated her first show, Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay, and I was starting my independent curatorial project La Salita. Seeing Marcela in this role was critical because it made me believe I could get there too. From there, I went to Gracie Mansion, where I was a curatorial assistant and program manager, and then I came to PS1 as a Fellow, where I am now an Assistant Curator. I moved around a lot and learned everything I could at each place to get to where I am now. I also knew when it was time to leave a place where I wasn’t being valued, which is difficult to do as a junior-level museum worker. PS1 is the first place where I’ve been able to hit my stride and see a future for myself

GM: You recently organized Freedom to Grow: The Lower Eastside Girls Club & jackie sumell (November 2022 –April 2023) and Malikah (May – October 2023) as part of PS1’s Homeroom initiative. What was your experience working on both of these shows, as well as organizing programs and exhibitions for Homeroom?

EKG: Homeroom is really the place where all my worlds come together – community organizing, radical pedagogy, and working with art and artists. I feel so lucky to have this space to experiment within MoMA PS1, a site of radical experimentation since the 1970’s as an alternative art space housed in a former school building I co-organized Freedom to Grow with my colleague Jody Graf, who concurrently organized a show called Life Between Buildings, which looked at how artists took up the space and politics of interstitial spaces in New York City. (Continued)