AAMC: A Report

May 18th and 19, associate curator Deirdre Conneely and curatorial assistant Jenny Gunn attended the eighth annual meeting of the Association of Art Museum Curators in New York City. The annual meeting encourages curators of all experience levels to network and discuss timely issues pertinent to the field. Gunn had received a travel fellowship from AAMC to attend, a grant that Conneely had received the previous year.


The first day’s sessions were held at the Museum of Modern Art and included topics such as collaborative curating and exhibition planning. The panel on collaborative curating featured members of FRAME (French Regional Art Museums) such as curators from the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Musées des Beaux Arts in Lille and Rouen. One of the more interesting panels was entitled “The Curator and the Art Market” and featured prominent speakers such as Robert Storr, dean of the Yale School of Art, and Lisa Dennison, chair of Sothebys. During this session, there was a lively discussion featuring not only museum curators but also gallery dealers and auction house representatives. Focal points of the discussion included the influence of scholarly work on the art market and also the question of whether or not museums should lend to gallery exhibitions.


Later that day, Gunn attended a mentoring session for junior curators with Jordana Pomeroy, chief curator of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, while Conneely enjoyed visiting with Catherine Smith from the El Paso Museum of Art whom she had previously befriended at the seventh annual meeting, in Los Angeles. That evening, there was a reception at the American Folk Art Museum where Gunn, Conneely, and Smith enjoyed a friendly and informative conversation with Brooke Anderson, director and curator of the Contemporary Center and the Henry Darger Study Center.


The second day’s sessions were held at the Jewish Museum and included topics such as negotiation and the exhibition catalogue. The session on negotiation featured presenter Daniel Aames from Sanford C. Bernstein and Co., who is also associate professor of Leadership and Ethics at Columbia University. The meeting ended with a visit to the newly renovated Charles Engelhard Court and period rooms of the American wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Curators could also visit the retrospective exhibition of Francis Bacon, which was organized in conjunction with the Tate Gallery, London, and opened at the Met that evening.