Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/691761
culturedmag.com 219 DIAZ: CARLOS BETANCOURT; MOSHAYEDI: ANDREW HERROLD Amanda Hunt Assistant Curator, The Studio Museum in Harlem New York City, NY "In 'A Constellation,' I put personal art historical heroes like David Hammons and Betye Saar in space with artists from our generation who have never shown at the Studio Museum. Putting them in dialogue but also in the context of an opening or subsequent program was really important and a way for me to stretch history into the present. In terms of our generation, it's so hard to parse what's happening politically across a spectrum of things. It's a really interesting, confusing time, and difficult to evaluate what's really going on, so 'A Constellation' was a way for me to be able to do that. It's like, Okay, I see other like-minded artists thinking through these things similarly or differently and they have a relationship to a civil rights history, to a sociopolitical history, and to a critical history." Jose Carlos Diaz Milton Fine Curator of Art, Andy Warhol Museum Pittsburgh, PA "I'm really interested in exploring my community. I am always interested in local emerging artists who are on the cusp of their careers. I am interested in firsts—their first museum show, their first time showing in a city. It's because these artists don't often have exposure. A lot of the exhibitions that I work on are usually a couple of years in the making. So it's not an artist that the market is watching, it's an artist that I had been personally invested in. Whether it's a very modest show or a group show, or whether we are working on something that is going to be monumental or really important for their career." Aram Moshayedi Curator, Hammer Museum Los Angeles, CA "I don't really see myself as getting to a place where I'll be able to identify certain strains and tendencies. If anything I want to resist that. Because times change, my interest changes, and tendencies within the art world change. It's important to be nimble enough to reflect and respond to those. I don't really have an agenda in terms of media, geography or historical time period. It's really a broader approach, which is based on certain things that in an abstract way just make sense. I hope that sometimes you get it right but actually I'm fine with sometimes getting it wrong."