
Every year our curatorial interns offer a series of spotlight talks on Thursdays and Saturdays at 3 PM in August and this year is no exception. Emma Perry and Kendall Grady are starting the talks this week.
Thursday, August 7 and Thursday August 14 at 3 PM Emma discusses Joseph Beuys’s Lightning with Stag in its Glare (Blitzschlag mit Lichtschein auf Hirsch). Saturday, August 9 and Saturday, August 16, at 3 PM Kendall explores Jane D. Marschingās series Arctic Listening Post specifically at MASS MoCA, Rising North and Future North: Ecotarium Module.
On Thursday August 21 and Thursday, August 28 at 3 PM, Emma will talk about Patty Chang’s Shangri-La. On Saturday, August 23 and Saturday, August 30 at 3 PM, Kendall will spotlight Lana Lin’s, No Power to Push Up the Sky.
If you’re curious about our interns here’s some biographical information they supplied:
Kendall Grady writes: “I grew up in suburban Chicago eating non-sugar cereals in a house with a red door. In May 2008 I graduated from DePauw University with B.A.s in English Writing and German and a minor in Studio Art, which have allowed me to fill four years with such immediately relevant enterprises as deconstructing the Michael Vick news narrative, attending Love Parade (fifteen years too late) while studying at Tübingen UniversitƤt, and editing videos to accompany poetry I read nude in a grocery cart full of eggs. In all seriousness, however, thanks to the likes of Johan Huizinga and, most recently, MASS MoCAās Badlands exhibit, I believe art-making is the catalyst for a collective future that rethinks gulfs between leisure and work, creativity and utilitarianism.
At MASS MoCA I play researcher, docent, evaluator of submissions, mailer of international UPS packages, and caretaker of biospheres, among other fringe jobs incurred by the curatorial department. In the past I have interned with The Poetry Project in Manhattan and Cinders Gallery, BOMB magazine, Soft Skull Press, and sculptor Marc Swanson in Brooklyn. MASS MoCA contributes to my hopeful trajectory toward museum and gallery work and/or independent and small press publishing.
Works of art I enjoy are: Rabbit by Gelatin, Perfect Lovers by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Pan by James Bidgood, andfurness by Cat Tyc. I enjoy other things, such as olives, bikes, New Wave film, No Wave music, and Bucuresti.”
Emma Perry reports: “Eugene (see below) may have graduated from Kenyon College before me (Iāll be a senior in the fall), but Iām from New Hampshire, and thatās really all that matters. We have beautiful old mountains studded with quartz, and the best eleven miles of seacoast youāll find on the Atlantic. The winters are cold, but in a lovely snow shoeing and sledding and hot chocolate kind of way⦠I promise. We have no sales tax. You can buy fireworks. Our state motto is āLive free or die.ā
Iām one of the Visual Arts interns this summer and Iām really enjoying my time here. As an intern, Iām responsible for researching and writing short descriptions and contextual explanations for some of the wall drawings in the Sol LeWitt retrospective thatās due to open in November. I also lead gallery tours and water all of the living plants that are on display in Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape. Iām sure this will prepare me well for my hopeful future life as an Art History professor and a New Hampshire homeowner.
Iāve also found time to work on my senior thesis this summer. The library at the Clark Art Institute is excellent, and Iāve amassed quite a significant pile of books on Conceptual Art in Central and South America. So if youāre in the Berkshires, and you need a book on Francis AlĆæs, Gabriel Orozco, Rivane Neuenschwander or Eugenio Dittborn, Iām sorry, I have them all in a pile on my desk. Try again in the fall when I go back to school.”
Our third intern in the curatorial department is Eugene Rutigliano aka “The Great Chainsaw of Being.” He writes: “I have spent most of my conscious life in New Jersey. Higher education occasioned my stint in beautiful Gambier, Ohio, where I got a degree in Art History from Kenyon College. That and turning 22 last May are some of the many things I did before Emma (see above). I otherwise ran a radio station on campus that was well-liked by some and often pretty operational. Now I’m an intern with MASS MoCA’s registrar, Dante Birch. The position involves maintaining the gallery lighting, surveying other buildings in the complex for renovations, keeping track of all incoming and outgoing artwork, and tending to the projectors for Jenny Holzer’s installation in building 5. If you come to the museum, you’ll probably see me on top of a ladder or struggling not to hit myself with one of those really long tape measures.”