This summer, Tricia Paik ’91 will take over as Indianapolis Museum of Art’s contemporary art curator . Paik, who is currently the associate curator of modern and contemporary art at the St. Louis Art Museum, has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Morgan Library and Museum and the Museum of Modern Art.
Can you describe your involvement in the arts at Dartmouth?
Tricia Paik: It was a really rich and incredible experience, not just in the visual arts, but I also did some theater as well, like set design, stage tech and technical production. I was also one of the founding members of the Rockapellas, and I went on the art history FSP in Florence, which was a really special experience. So Dartmouth was really important in forming these interests, not just in the visual arts, but in a crossed-over, interdisciplinary approach.
Had you always been interested in art and curating?
TP: My parents love art, so I started going to museums when I was quite young, still in a stroller. In high school I took an art history class, naturally, which started me in my interest in continuing education in art history. The one thing I have to say is that I actually applied for the two internships that they offered for seniors at the Hood Museum, and I was so crestfallen because I did not get accepted my senior year. I thought my career in the arts was over. Thankfully, that’s not the case — I’m still in the business and moving to a new position in creative contemporary art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, so it definitely did not deter me. My takeaway lesson to all the students who are reading this is not to give up. It’s cliché, but it’s true. You have to keep trying and work hard until you can finally get what you want and not be deterred if the path takes one direction. Sometimes that direction leads you to better opportunities in the future.
What kind of work will you be doing in your new position in Indianapolis?
TP: I’ll oversee the collection of art that they have from about 1945 to the present, predominantly paintings, sculptures and video. They also have an extraordinary outdoor sculpture park [The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park: 100 Acres]. The former curators there had commissioned a number of important clients to create site-specific work for the park, so I have to now work on developing future commissions there and decide how to take 100 Acres into the next chapter of its history. I’ll also curate shows there of contemporary artists. There’s a big audience for contemporary art, so it’s going to be a really great opportunity to work there.
What have you been working on in your current position at the Saint Louis Art Museum?
TP: We just opened a new building called the East Building, designed by world-renowned architect Sir David Chipperfield. That was just unveiled last summer, so I got the opportunity to rethink the collection and reinstall our collection in gallery spaces that span about 12,000 square feet. That was a big project. I also worked on a major commission with another world-renowned artist named Andy Goldsworthy. It’s a work called “Stone Sea,” and that debuted last year as well.
What attracts you to working with contemporary styles?
TP: I love to see how artists can challenge the way art has been made before. What great contemporary artists are able to do is find a new technique or form or style or concept and make something new out of that. I also love to see how contemporary art fits into a continuum of art history and how it connects with other cultures and other time periods.
You’ve worked as a museum research assistant, instructor and lecturer. How does your experience in these roles inform your curatorial work?
TP: When I lived in New York, I was a gallery talk lecturer at MoMA and at the MET and also the Morgan Library, and those were really exciting opportunities to look at art not just for myself, but for the public. You would have to be able to bring together factual knowledge about artists and movements in art history with interpretation of works of art and make it accessible to the audiences. I still do that now. It’s always part of a curator’s job to give public talks and share art with the public. It’s very important that curators share the art with the public. We don’t work in a vacuum. There was an earlier conception in the olden days that the curator was just in his or her office getting the books and curating shows, and that’s about it. But now the curator is really an active participant in the art world, being an advocate and an ambassador for art in their museums when they travel. Especially when you work for a Midwestern museum, and there’s still so much attention on either coast, you really have to be an ambassador for your museums.
What have been some of your favorite exhibits to curate?
TP: In late June of last year, we unveiled our new contemporary galleries, and I had the extraordinary opportunity to study the contemporary collection from 1945 onward and rethink the groupings and the galleries. We have great strength in postwar American art, so I was able to tell the story, from abstract expressionism onward, of how American art emerged in New York in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Another installation I got to do was an exhibition called “Postwar German Art.” It was a really great contrast. Those artists are responding to World War II but in very different ways and in different time periods.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
