Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/691761
220 culturedmag.com Thomas J. Lax Associate Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art, Museum of Modern Art New York City, NY "My curatorial work began because I saw in art a space that couldn't exist anywhere else in society. At the time that I began to focus in on art history I was interested in a set of questions that were related to social justice, to the long history of black people around the world and thinking through contestation and political struggle. I was reading many things from the history of black radical intellectual thought and realized art was the way that I wanted to engage the long arch that I was deeply fascinated by. I remember reading a quote from Fred Moten, the fantastic poet and critic, who said that politics is a debased form of aesthetics, and that totally resonated with me. There is a certain sense of possibility in terms of breaking rules and using one's imagination that exists in a specific way in art and culture and doesn't exist in other political forms." Rujeko Hockley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum Brooklyn, NY "On a global level, I would say that my mission is very much artist-driven. Being a curator is very interesting because we are interstitial tissue in some ways. We are between the artist and the institution. You are the person who is there to advocate and say, 'This is what should be, this is how we should think about it.' I take very seriously that idea of being an advocate for the artist and the work. That's a big part of my mission. I am extremely interested in telling the stories of people that we haven't always seen—obviously people of color and women. Feminism is very close to my ethos as a human but also a curator, and writ large as a way to look at the world. Not necessarily in a way that says, 'This show, this person, this woman,' but really a reframing of how we look at the world. Talking about issues relating to race is the same thing. It's about how we bring that to everything that we do and all the conversations that we have." Naomi Beckwith Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Chicago, IL "I want the contemporary to become legible. One of the hardest things, I believe, for a greater audience is not just understanding contemporary art but literally trusting themselves to even encounter it. My first mission is becoming a meditator between an audience and the artist. Then I have a second stronger mission, which is really to champion the work of artists whom I feel need to expand the narrative we have around art both historically and in the contemporary moment. For me that mostly means working with artists of African descent. That mission is a stand-in for a larger drive, which is about making the world understand that there is more than one narrative making up the story of art. We need to push against the one accepted story of how art progresses from one movement to another or how a kind of line moves between one master to another. When in fact there have been people working in multiple media and globally who can really enrich the story of what we understand art to be now." HOCKLEY: JONATHAN DORADO; BECKWITH: NATHAN CEAY