Guest Blog By Gabrielle Mitchell-Bonds ’27
As a concentrator in History of Art (as well as History & Literature), I am constantly seeking ways to engage with contemporary art on various levels to substantiate my studies. While broadening my understanding of the possibilities for artmaking, where art can take place, and the dialogues it can foster, I have been eager to take on a curatorial role and, in doing so, find myself in direct contact with living artists.
Through the MCS Arts & Museums Winter Internship Program, I served as the Curatorial Intern for the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts—a contemporary gallery space on Harvard’s campus housed alongside the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies (AFVS), and the Harvard Film Archive (HFA). Under the supervision of Danni Shen, Senior Curatorial and Public Programs Assistant, I worked in support of the opening of two exhibitions: Signal and Strata, featuring works by Elena Damiani, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, and Ishmael Randall-Weeks; and Cosmos Falling, featuring works by Xin Liu, Lawrence Lek, Yuyan Wang, and Angela Su. Both of these exhibitions were group shows and required a variety of research and logistical duties to ensure public accessibility and overall organization of materials.
Before this internship, I had not yet formally worked in or for a gallery. Though I had experience coordinating and curating a group exhibition with other students, much of our collaboration was nurtured through happy trial and error, and our genuine curiosity for learning the necessities of preparing a small gallery space on our own was both an opportunity for community building and a gathering of passionate minds to uplift student artists. All this to say: we made do with what we had and created a beautiful environment because of it. At the Carpenter Center, my tasks were more specific and oriented me further to the smaller, yet wholly important, moving parts that come together to actualize an institutional public exhibition, as well as the behind-the-scenes work of a gallery. For both exhibitions, I helped write and edit text wall labels for the artworks, draft a gallery guide, and make social media content sharing more about the shows. Seeing everything come together was an amazingly fulfilling experience. As more and more works were being brought into the gallery, with one even being reassembled within the gallery itself, the installation process made everything feel all the more official.
One part of my role that I particularly enjoyed was working with publications. In addition to the editorial side of things, such as layout designs and proofreading, I helped research books related to Signal and Strata for the Carpenter Center’s reading corner, a public area with free-to-use resources in conjunction with current exhibitions. Signal and Strata features Peruvian artists addressing topics like ecology and archeology, colonialism and material extraction, and ritual and remembrance in a lineage of Latin American art. Through my research and reading through other books provided for the Carpenter Center by the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), I learned more about the interdisciplinary interests of the artists and the various ways these themes, then presented within the context of the contemporary landscape, can be translated to the public beyond the display of the artworks themselves.
The Carpenter Center also keeps an extensive archive of materials related to past exhibitions, and it was so fun going through them all and seeing the arc of artists’ presence over the years. More specifically, I was able to explore the archival presence of Black art and artists in the gallery. From household names like Pope.L and Lorraine O’Grady to younger artists like Diedrick Brackens and Janiva Ellis, the coverage of each of their practices through curatorial essays and other commissioned texts was an educational resource for me. I spent so much time feeding my artistic curiosities by reading lots of printed matter in the Carpenter Center!
Overall, I had such a wonderful time working with the Carpenter Center and am so inspired by the present and future of contemporary art—and continuing to be in spaces with living, working artists. I’m grateful for the opportunity to work my very first curatorial role, and I extend endless gratitude to MCS and the rest of the team I worked with at the Carpenter Center, including Kate McNamara, Laura Céré, Caitlin Tucker-Melvin, Matt Murphy, Maria Gonzalez, and Tarik Garrett.
conversation with Dr. Madeline Murphy Turner at the opening reception of Signal and Strata.
