When most people walk into a gallery, all they see is the art. But a curator sees choices: the wording of the accompanying text, the wall treatments, the placement of the art. Students in the Museum Studies Program at Syracuse University had their first shot at curating a show this year, and now have a new appreciation for the job.
“It makes you wonder how curators sleep at night,” Serena Vascik says. She is one of the students in the Advanced Curatorship class at Syracuse who had the opportunity to work with a collection of drawings from the Dahesh Museum of Art. Students were tasked with curating the “entire show from start to finish,” according to Vascik.
“The Dahesh lent us this show and gave us full rein,” Vascik explains. “It was really intimidating, but at the same time, really exciting.”
The Essential Line
The Essential Line: Drawings from The Dahesh Museum of Art was the end product of the collaboration, and is on view at the Palitz Gallery, located in the Lubin House (at 11 E. 61st St.) through March 24. The collection was first exhibited as From the Studio to the Salon on campus in the SU Art Galleries.
Students got a sneak peek of the collection of almost 50 SU Art drawings in May of last year, and hit the ground running once classes resumed this past fall. They began looking for a theme to tie the show together, and started research on the drawings in order to write wall text for the pieces. The writing—and rewriting—of these labels took all semester.
“You don’t realize how much work is involved in writing label copy or writing brochures until you actually do it yourself,” Sarisha Guarneiri, another student involved in the project, explains.
In addition to writing wall text, each student was assigned a specific role to get the show off the ground. Guarneiri was in charge of design elements for From the Studio to the Salon. Instead of the classic white, she chose red for the salon-style wall, as well as damask-patterned wallpaper. One thing that “stands out for me was actually physically putting together the show,” Guarneiri says. “Working under the direction of the SU Art Gallery staff and professor Teddy Aiken, we were able to handle the drawings and arrange them to determine the narration of the show.”
David Farmer, the Dahesh Museum’s director of exhibitions, pared down the show at Syracuse for the Palitz Gallery, using edited versions of the wall texts and creating a more focused theme.
“Giving graduate students in Museum Studies the use of our collection is an ideal extension of the partnership that can exist between a university and a museum,” Farmer says. “In entrusting our collection to future curators, we are helping to prepare the next generation of museum professionals.”
