Beth Kantrowitz is the former co-director of Allston Skirt Gallery, one of the most exciting venues in Boston’s contemporary visual arts scene until its closure in 2008.
More recently, Beth and fellow curator Kathleen O’Hara run Drive-By, an innovative Watertown art space whose fascinating exhibitions include “Portraits,” recently explored on ArtSake.
Ahead of Beth’s current curatorial endeavor, the public art project Move Me, we asked her our “Cur8or” questions.
Your project with artist Roberta Paul is called Move Me. Explain?
MOVE ME is a “pop up” public art project that will take place in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the spring of 2012. The Cambridge Arts Council 501(c)(3), bkprojects and artist Roberta Paul will collaborate on this endeavor.
Inspired by Paul’s travels to the Serengeti, this multifaceted event investigates themes of immigration, national identity, and life transitions through the metaphor of animal migration. It will include a four-week gallery exhibition at the Cambridge Arts Council, as well as a two-week continuous “performance” in the streets.
At its essence, this is a project imbued with a sense of wonderment, inquisitiveness and self-reflection; it is about boundaries and borders, real and perceived.
Being a curator is like a) flying a plane, b) being a gardener or c) waiting for the subway to come?
Being a gardener: cultivating relationships with artists, spaces and viewers.
What’s the most surprising response overheard at a show you curated?
How did you know that the work you chose would work so well together?!?
The unauthorized biography of your life is titled:
Why Not….
Share a surprise twist in the Beth Kantrowitz story.
I worked as a social worker for many years.
What is the most misunderstood aspect of being a curator?
That every curator is or was an artist. A curator works alongside the artist or the artist’s work to understand and present in the best and most thoughtful way.
What are you currently reading?
Death of a Salesman
If Duchamp walked into your gallery, what would he say?
Where’s the urinal?
The MOVE ME project will travel through the streets of Cambridge starting with MBTA trolleys on April 9, 2012. Also, work from MOVE ME will exhibit at the Cambridge Arts Council gallery April 2-June 15, 2012, with an artist reception Friday, April 27, 2012, 6-8 PM. Learn about the project’s successful Kickstarter campaign.
Images: images from the MOVE ME project by Roberta Paul, in collaboration with Beth Kantrowitz and the Cambridge Arts Council.
Barbara Grad says
well done Beth