LAUREN SCHELL DICKENS:

Senior Curator

The Storyteller

“I volunteered at a local library in high school because I had this idea that I would read every novel starting with the letter A. I didn’t get very far, but that kind of thinking—the false idea that I could work holistically and understand all of it—has taken me a long way in my career. As you get older and live more, you realize you only ever know a part of the puzzle.” This reminiscence from SJMA’s chief curator, Lauren Schell Dickens, speaks to her career, always learning and helping artists and associate curators assemble the pieces of a puzzle that tells a much broader story about their work, a shared history or aspects of modern society. She describes curators as “the connecting point between the artist and audience. Our job is to ask the questions that the audience is thinking so that we can all connect with what the artist is thinking.”

Lauren’s interest in curation began in college when she noticed how inert objects could tell stories and inquired about museums’ role in writing that history. Later, when working with artists, the people who create those objects, she became invested in the artists’ agency in those processes. The core of Lauren’s and most contemporary curators’ work comes from speaking with artists, engaging with ideas, and thinking through what is happening in the world. Through those conversations, specific themes and concepts can arise and suggest a story that needs to be told.

When asked what she might want the community to know about her, she says, “I like working behind the scenes. I hope folks think of the museum as a place where they will learn something, be blown away, or just see something cool. I hope they see themselves or their neighbor in a way that they didn’t before. It’s not really about me.” C