Anna Hiddleston-Galloni

During this residency, I aim to gather as many accounts and examples as possible of how American museums reach out to minorities, local communities and children, to appreciate what works and what doesn’t work, and to meet the people who make museums open and thought-provoking places. Over the years, mediation has become an increasingly important part of curating. Podcasts, virtual exhibition tours, exhibition guides, working with schools are some of the ways we do this, but it is also necessary to program exhibitions that speak to communities and the young, to place art in a social context and explore themes which reflect current concerns. 

Our practice is shifting away from traditional linear approaches to art history as a development from one movement to another. We are looking for ways of decolonializing our readings of the collection, of breaking with accepted narratives in order to expand cultural boundaries and embrace all forms of art by all kinds of people. 

I would also like to meet the artists that work in these cities, to understand their concerns, their visions and how better to work with them. A museum should not only be a place of display, but also of creation and production for artists, dancers and musicians alike. At the Centre Pompidou, I worked on a series of exhibitions by contemporary artists where we produced an installation for a specific space in the museum, the “Espace 315”. However, our support of artists can go beyond production to include residencies, grants, the providing of studios, concert halls, or technical workshops to help with their work. I would like to discover the different means and ways American museums have found to support artists from all disciplines. 

Although I regularly work with American museums whether curating exhibitions from the Centre Pompidou collection, requesting loans from major American collections or contributing to American conferences and publications, I would like to delve deeper into the ways they function. If we look at the museums in Washington, many are devoted to minorities – the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of Asian Art, of African Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts – to name but a few. It thus seemed an obvious choice to begin my residency. Miami will give me the chance to explore the Latino-Caribbean art scene thanks to the many artists and communities residing there, and Houston will open the doors to the art institutions of Texas which deal with very different histories and realities from the East Coast. Here I will be able to explore not only the beautiful Menil Collection, but also the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Kimbell museum in Fort Worth which has developed an extensive outreach program.  

Perhaps one of a curator’s most important jobs is to share. We cannot shy away from emotion in the face of intellect, seek debate without respect. Knowledge must go hand in hand with accessibility, beauty with diversity, art with society. During this residency, I would like to find new ways of being a curator, focusing on issues such as equal access and approachability, to reinvent the museum model as a place where art connects with life.