Curator Spotlight: Jen Dragon
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Tell us a bit about your background.
My background in the arts started as a child drawing pictures accompanying imaginative storytelling. Growing up near New York City with its accessible museums and galleries and as an art student in the early ’80s (Purchase College, ’84), I was fascinated by the continually shifting landscape of contemporary art and its part in the cultural landscape. After college, I attended a year of visual arts graduate studies in Perugia, Italy, as a Rotary International scholar and, upon my return, launched a business as a restorer of historic color on antique maps and prints. This restoration studio was later broadened into a storefront art gallery exhibiting mid-career contemporary artists. Over time, I learned that curating exhibitions was much more interesting to me than selling art, and I’d rather discover shared themes between artists’ works instead of haggling over prices. For me, exhibition curation is a form of narration, as each artist draws out and expands on different ideas. Working as a curator, I finally returned to my childhood fascination with storytelling.
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What are you most hoping visitors take away from CUSP?
In the current exhibition, CUSP, the three artists, Brian Dickerson, Melinda Stickney-Gibson, and Millicent Young, are visually independent from one another yet collectively support and enhance each other. The artworks constantly change and interact, transforming not only within themselves but in relationship to their neighbors. My goal with CUSP is to present art’s capacity to be ambiguous and shape-shifting in a simple, direct, and approachable way. What I hope visitors will experience with this exhibition is a new way to view art that originates from the physical experience of seeing the installation in person. From the scale of Millicent Young’s environment of vines, video, poetry, and hair, to Melinda Stickney-Gibson’s tower of glowing golden veils of memory to Brian Dickerson’s brooding angled paintings, each artist presents entirely new perspectives.
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How has collaborating with The Hyde Collection impacted you as a curator?
With high ceilings, moveable walls, and well-balanced lighting, the Charles Wood Gallery is a large and handsome space – the best I have ever worked with! Until now, I have only curated for smaller art centers and understaffed non-profits, so the experience of working with professional art handlers, registrars, installers, graphic designers, curators, docents and security officers imbued me with renewed respect for museum personnel and the importance of staff to the interpretation, protection and presentation of artworks. The Hyde has also underlined for me the positive power museums have on their communities. Living as I do in rural upstate New York, the importance of museums and performance spaces to our communities brings hope and pride to its residents. Art has the power to uplift and transform, and my work as a curator is to contribute to this goal.
