Christina Olsen
Curator Incoming Director, University of Michigan Museum of Art Ann Arbor, Michigan umma.umich.edu
Christina Olsen, curator and past director of Williams College Museum of Art in Massachusetts, will step into her new role as director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan, effective October 30. In a career spanning more than two decades, Christina has curated and produced groundbreaking exhibitions and initiatives, including Shine a Light, an acclaimed annual museum-wide exhibition and event in Portland, Oregon; Object Stories, an installation, audience, participation, and outreach initiative in 2010; WALLS, a student art loan program at Williams College, and Accession Number, an exhibition at the Williams College Museum of Art. In earlier posts, she was an associate producer at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco; curator of Art Access, one of the first digital museum collections at the J. Paul Getty Museum; and a program officer at the Getty Foundation, where she managed the Foundation's $4M in global grants for museum-based research and interpretation. Christina earned a bachelor's degree in history of art from the University of Chicago, and a master's degree and doctorate in art history from the University of Pennsylvania. When she's not working you can find her running in the Arboretum. Christina resides in Ann Arbor with her husband and two teenage daughters.
FAVORITES
Book: No single one. At the moment I’m rereading and deeply enjoying The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.
Destination: NYC
Motto: Don’t be afraid of anyone.
Sanctuary: Maine Coast and the hills of Echo Park in Los Angeles.
THE QUERY
Where were you born?
New York City
What were some of the passions and pastimes of your earlier years?
Reading novels, writing short stories, drawing, and watching lots of TV.
What is your first memory of art as an experience?
Lying on the marble floor in the Met’s Armor galleries taking a drawing class for kids.
How and when did you make your entree into the profession of museum curation?
Slowly and circuitously, first as a museum technologist working at the Getty in Los Angeles thinking about the implications of first generation online collections; and then as curator of public programs thinking about the work of a group of contemporary artists in Portland and the changing museum-going public.
Why does this form of artistic expression suit you?
The form of museum curation suits me because I’m interested in art’s evolving relationship with people and places over time - how something made a long time ago continues to live and create meaning for viewers centuries later. I like the strangeness of museums - how nineteenth-century they are as a typology, and how they’re evolving.
What are your top priorities as you begin your tenure at UMMA?
Making exciting, ambitious exhibitions that matter right now, and understanding the local cultural and art context of Michigan and UMMA’s role in interpreting it.
How do you envision the future of the university art museum?
University art museums should produce groundbreaking research; they should produce and attempt new forms of exhibitions and new forms of museums themselves. They should be the bleeding edge of the field of museums; doing and trying things other museums can’t, and gathering ideas from the university’s many disciplines into their projects and publications. And they should be radically open; offering broad and deep access to their collections and resources, and supportive of the experiments and ideas that they help make.
What themes are you most drawn to in your research?
How artists ingest and transform ideas, and how in turn the culture ingests and interprets artists’ ideas.
Looking back over exhibitions you've worked on, is there a show that stands out as most memorable?
Probably my exhibition Accession Number, because it’s recent and the ideas it explored are still really current for me. It was about the numbering system museums use to inventory works of art, and a particular set of objects that entered the museum from 1960 to 1962. I wanted to explore how much a museum collection, unedited by curation, can tell us about an institution’s ambitions, anxieties, and tastes. So the show was a form of institutional critique in a way, exploring Williams College and the college museum in the early 1960s by way of a set of objects it acquired.
How would you describe your creative process?
I take notes on a lot of different things - books, exhibitions, movies, things I see, conversations, impressions, lectures, etc - and I keep a running list of projects and exhibitions I’d love to do. I think out loud with people from different backgrounds and disciplines. Sometimes I have an idea and am uncertain of the form or timing for it, and I’ll tuck it away for a long time, sometimes years. I think ideas often gestate for a long time, and often combine and recombine unexpectedly, so I believe in quantity and chance.
Do you have a favorite artistic resource that you turn to?
Radiotopia’s podcasts; art blogs Two Coats of Paint and BrooklynRail; and The New Yorker.
How has your aesthetic/style evolved over the years?
Good question. I used to be stricter and more judgmental, aesthetically preferring things and spaces that were really beautifully made and clean looking. I’ve become more open and eclectic, and I really like contrasts these days -juxtaposition of styles and ideas, especially in museums and fiction.
From where do you draw inspiration?
Books, long drives, walks, and plane trips. Wherever I have time to think and wander, mentally.
What three things can’t you live without?
My family, art, and New York City.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Make something every day.
Is there a book or film that has changed you?
I considered this question very seriously. I’d say there are a few, but I’ll mention the one that’s less known these days: Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment by Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz.
Whom in your life would you like to thank, and for what?
My mother, for her intelligence and kindness, and my father, for his joy in living.
What drives you these days?
The political and ecological turmoil of these times; time passing so quickly; and finally knowing enough to be able to make something worthwhile.