The ArtSlant Team visited with Kristina Newhouse when she had a few free minutes at the Torrance Art Museum (and those minutes are hard to come by!).  Newhouse has been the curator at TAM for several years and has created and produced countless exhibitions for them.  In addition, Newhouse is an active writer within the California art world.  During the visit, Kristina discussed her career, her influences, and her commitment to curating.

ArtSlant:  How did you begin your curation career?   

Kristina Newhouse:  While getting an MFA at California State University, Long Beach, I realized I was not destined to be a studio artist. I was encouraged by the faculty to go into art history; however that discipline did not feel close enough to artmaking for me. I wanted to retain my affinities with artists and my empathy for their process. It occurred to me that by becoming a curator, I could have the closeness to artists I craved and make good use of my skills sets. Moreover, placing artworks and creating conversations between them satisfies my creative "jones".

AS: What was the first show you curated?  

KN:  I belonged to a cooperative art group called 34 Degrees. The first show I curated was with this group. It was called "Sprawledou(b)t" and took place at the old CSULB Art Department Galleries.

AS:  What was your favorite show?

KN:  That's kind of like asking a parent to name her favorite child! Really, every show is my favorite the week it opens! 

AS:  If you could buy any art you wished, what would you own?  

KN:  Yayoi Kusama's Fireflies on the Water (2002).   

AS:  What are the greatest joys in curating?  

KN:  Meeting with artists in their studios and delving into the "hows" and "whys" of their practice (intended and unintended). Another biggie is the week of opening up artwork and beginning to set the show-it is as joyful as Christmas morning every time. And then the hard work begins!

AS:  How have you approached the exhibition program at TAM (Torrance Art Museum)?    

KN:  Because the Museum is a city-operated community art space, I try to strike a balance between the needs of the people in Torrance and the South Bay and my interest in advocating the contemporary art coming out of Southern California. I have three exhibition spaces, so for each exhibition cycle I try to have at least one show that operates within the comfort zone of the community, while balancing it against something more challenging in the other rooms.

AS:  How do you decide upon the shows, the artists, the ideas behind your exhibitions?

KN:  As I do not yet have a board to satisfy, I have been able to get away with having my process be pretty organic. Usually the idea for a group exhibition comes to me through a process of association. Typically I have found some point of connection between artists on an unconscious level. Once I am aware of the connection, I try to "name" it.

AS:  How do you see curation as an "artistic" practice?

KN:  Curation is about drawing associations between things, formally and conceptually. The exhibition, the room itself, becomes a kind of composition. At its most interesting, it is highly creative.

AS:  Have you any recommendations for up-and-coming curators or critics? 

KN:  Suggested readings? For up-and-coming curators, I would say do as much of it as you can in as many kinds of spaces as you can. I once did a window-display kind of exhibition at the Del Amo Mall-it was a tremendous amount of fun to watch how people responded to art in the banal atmosphere of a shopping mall. I measured the success of the show in the number of greasy fingerprints and nose smudges I had to wipe from the glass each week.

AS:  Suggested readings?

KN:  "Words of Wisdom: A Curator's Vade Mecum" (this book really reveals the various agendas lurking beneath curation. You are bound to enjoy the remarks of some curators and be totally offended by others), "Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space" by Brian O'Doherty and Thomas McEvilley (a classic) and, of course, the last few issues of Artforum, with the "battle royale" being waged on the editorial pages between Robert Storr,  Okwui Enwezor, and others about the last Venice Biennale.

AS:  Lastly, you've been curating and writing about art in Southern California for quite a while.  In a couple of sentences, or a string of words, can you talk a bit about your perception of the "Southern California" art scene? 

KN:  Seems like there has always been a sense of LA attempting to "catch up" to New York. While our gallery network is still not as vast, Los Angeles has certainly become a major global art center. You see it in the proliferation of LA based shows like "Los Angeles 1955-1985: Birth of an Art Capital" at the Pompidou. You also see it in the choices made by young artists who have not graduated from the local art schools-those people from the Yale, Chicago Art Institute, Cranbrook, etc.--who have weighed their choices and opted to settle in Los Angeles rather than New York. Right now, the talent pool here is very deep and wide! It is quite exciting!

-  ArtSlant Team

(Image:  Kristina Newhouse with works by Joe Biel and Drew Dominickin.  Courtesy of Kristina Newhouse)