3 Questions

with Candice Hopkins

On Wednesday, IAIA/MoCNA’s Brown Bag it series contienes with a free chat with Candice Hopkins, the interim chief curator at the Cathedral Place cultural institution. Along with her post there, Hopkins has the distinction of being one of three curators for SITE’s hugely successful Unsettled Landscapes exhibit.

There is so much talk about the extinction of the curator. As a young curator on the forefront, how do you react to this?

If there is an extinction, I haven’t heard it! However, the over-emphasis placed on curators over the past few years is starting to wane and this is a good thing. A curator’s job is to create a resonant context for art, and traditionally be the caretaker for a collection, not be the star of the show.

Unsettled Landscapes in particular was an all-female curated exhibit. Will this be a theme in upcoming SITE biennials?

The next curators for SITE’s new biennial series were just announced on e-flux. There are five: four women and one man. The consistent trends, I think, are sense of collective exhibition-making as well as the focus on Latin America and Native North American art. Three of the five curators were born in Latin America, and one, Kathleen Ash-Milby is Navajo, originally from Albuquerque..

What's the importance of local series like Brown Bag it?

Brown Bag it was formed as a way to showcase the great ideas and talents of staff at IAIA. By offering the talks during the lunch hour and on the Plaza, it is a way to share knowledge in an informal setting. In my case, I will reflect on two major exhibitions that I have been a part of, one in Canada and one in Santa Fe, and consider how these exhibitions have shaped understandings of art by Indigenous artists.

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