On March 1, the Racine Art Museum welcomed Lena Vigna to their staff as Curator of Exhibitions. While Vigna's heart remains in the Midwest because she was born in Illinois, her childhood was spent in Florida, unaccustomed to the accessibility of world art museums at her fingertips. However, with her father's encouragement Vigna pursued
a Master's degree in Contemporary Art from the University of Illinois-Urbana. From there she applied her skills to curating exhibits titled “Crossroads of American Sculpture” featuring Robert Indiana, Bruce Nauman, and David Smith, “Laced with History” at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, and “Luxury, Consumption, and Excess” at the Miami University Art Museum. Appreciative to be back in Wisconsin with family, Vigna relates the inspiration she finds in contemporary art.
Q: You've only been at the RAM for two weeks but what are your first thoughts about the future at the museum?
A: Bruce [Executive Director Bruce Pepich] and I are already looking at exhibits for 2011. We're taking a look at what's in the permanent collections but exhibitions on loan as well. The trend has been to look outward, but now because museum collections have grown over the years, we're beginning to look inward, at what a museum has, or to combine a loaned exhibition with the permanent collections. We have a lot of material [artwork] to work with.
Q: Could you give an example of this?
A: When I was at the Miami University Art Museum I had a beautiful, exquisite pair of sieve [porcelain] vases, cobalt blue with handpainting, court ladies in formal, period dresses. In one exhibition titled “Form and Figure” I displayed them with other artworks on loan that had to do with the figure, so the handpainted figures were important, the
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context. In the exhibit, “Luxury, Consumption, and Excess” they were paired with loaned artwork displaying these qualities, as symbols of status and luxury. The docents at the museum didn't recognize it was the same pair of vases used in each exhibit because the context changed, and they were paired with different artwork in each exhibit.
Q: How does this context relate to contemporary art?
A: I've found a lot of people are nervous about contemporary art and I don't want them to be afraid of contemporary art. My interest is in connecting them to the art within several contexts, whether you talk to them about the work or the artists [that create them]. Artists live and breathe in the same world we do, they live and breathe the same air. They are not trying to mystify anyone. They're purpose is to share and communicate.
Q: How have you experienced this?
A: I was personally grateful to have the opportunity to see Manet's Olympia in Paris. And at that period, that time, people's response to that artwork was severe, well, they we're sickened by it, they saw it as shameful. But now the image seems quite tame, a nude woman, an odalisque. But when I experienced the piece in person, her skin is
green and pink, the context of her boudoir, the flowers. It's so much more tangible, the paint quality, the vibrancy. It's much more sensual. You can understand why they might feel that way when you actually see the painting. That's how some people few contemporary art today, but these pictures [historical] were very scandalous at the time causing similar reactions.
Q: How will you apply this “context' to the RAM?
A: You don't need history to give you validation. I hope to give people this experience and how to understand it [the artwork or the exhibition]. An opportunity to have a transcendent moment to beauty, to have the work right in front of you, which is compelling. Everyone brings something to the museum, to an piece of art, because we all have our own experience. So it's new work all the time. We also experience things differently today than we did fifty years ago. And not everyone responds to a particular piece of art, but they may find one [in an exhibition] that captures their attention or they relate to, they might experience. Each artwork can be looked at on so many layers, levels, combinations, contexts.
Q: What are your thoughts on coming back to Wisconsin?
A: It's good to be back because I've lived more years now in the Midwest [Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin] than in the South, or Florida where I grew up. In Wisconsin, there's the circumstances of these creative minds and the people who support art. Wisconsin's people again have so many layers, with strong roots to the buildings with cream city brick, there's a richness to the population. I'm drawn to the community here.
