In Dialogue: Art 365 Curator Shannon Fitzgerald by Julia Kirt
The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s exhibition Art 365 will open at [ArtSpace] at Untitled in Oklahoma City on March 25, 2011. Five artists each receive a $12,000 honorarium and one year of interaction with curator Shannon Fitzgerald. Visit www.Art365.org for more information.
As curator for the Art 365 exhibition, Shannon Fitzgerald has followed closely and conversed regularly with the five commissioned artists for more than a year. She selected their projects from a pool of more than 100 proposals. As a curator, her role shifts depending on the exhibition, from guide to advocate, editor to producer, juror to collaborator. Fitzgerald has curated solo, group and thematic exhibitions that are international, national, regional and local in scope. Besides recent independent curatorial projects in Oklahoma and St. Louis, Fitzgerald was Chief Curator at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis from 2000 until 2007. She was the 2010 Fall Visiting Scholar-InResidence at Columbus State University, Columbus, Georgia. She has published many essays on contemporary artists, received a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and a MA in Art History and Museum Studies from the University of
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Wisconsin - Milwaukee. She relocated to Oklahoma City in 2009. Julia Kirt: What connections or threads do you see among exhibitions you have curated over the years? Do you have a curatorial oeuvre so to speak? Shannon Fitzgerald: There are threads, but I hope my interests are diverse and evolve. The best art and artists prompt me to acquire new knowledge and discover new things, the world, and our place in it. For me, the reward of working in contemporary art is its pace and expansiveness of ideas and experiences. Most of my work reflects my keen interest in social, cultural, and political discourse and how it informs visual cultural. Many of the ideas I have explored through exhibitions involves visual articulations addressing history, race, diaspora, poverty, gender, inequity, the body, architecture, landscape, and the environment. All of the artists I am engaged with and/or artists that I think
are contributing to the international art world in the most significant ways challenge our understanding of contemporary life. Some of the most inspiring work can be heartbreaking, haunting, devastatingly sad, and uncomfortable, and, as in life, that which moves me can be beautiful, whimsical, fleeting, and funny. JK: What is distinctive about working with local artists? SF: I have always worked with local artists in every community I have lived in. They are essential to the cultural landscape of the art community as contributors, educators, and audiences. However, I have never worked in a ‘regional’ institution, so I feel it is more important to integrate local artists into the main programming and select artists whose work can hold its own. The artists interested in advancement are also interested in the national and international scene and understand the benefit of that exposure and