The Director and the Curator Have the Same Job

Episode 0010: Catherine Whitney on David Hockney and how the arts stimulate our brains

Curator Catherine Whitney (Honolulu Museum of Art) on David Hockney's final retrospective, museum leadership, and the neuroscience of why art is good for you.

Kendall asked Catherine Whitney, Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Honolulu Museum of Art, whether her job as a curator was something like directing a film. She agreed immediately, then described the role in terms almost identical to what Ken Seng, director of photography on Deadpool and Street Fighter, had said about directors six episodes earlier.

The short answer

The jobs that are within the job for a film director and a museum curator are very similar. Both take work from a group of specialists they don’t personally control and shape it into one coherent experience for an audience, without necessarily being the most technically skilled person in those specific disciplines themselves.

What a film director actually does

Seng has spent his career working alongside directors on major productions. When Kendall asked what actually makes a director’s job unique, Seng didn’t point to shot selection or camera work.

That’s what’s unique about a director. They take all these incredibly talented, creative people and reign those ideas into one unified concept. The really good ones empower everyone around them, but still unify the vision.

A director doesn’t personally light the scene, design the costumes, or build the visual effects. They’re the person responsible for making sure all of that specialized work adds up to the film the director is trying to make.

What a museum curator actually does

When Kendall floated the director comparison to Whitney, she didn’t just accept it. She ran with it.

That’s a great metaphor. You have this sort of narrative, the story you’re trying to get across, and you’re using the pieces that you have, your artworks, your sculpture, your works on paper, as your actors.

For Whitney, an exhibition starts with a concept, not an object. The artworks become the actors. The exhibition space becomes the stage. Her job is figuring out how individual pieces shine on their own, and what changes once they’re placed next to each other.

The real skill is unifying everyone else’s expertise

Neither Seng nor Whitney does this work alone. Seng’s list of collaborators on a single film includes a production designer, a costume designer, a visual effects supervisor, and, on an action movie, a stunt coordinator responsible for entire sequences. Whitney’s list includes collections staff who manage the physical care of the art, education teams who translate a concept for different audiences, and, on larger shows, dedicated exhibition and graphic designers.

What both jobs actually require is holding all of that specialized work in view at once and making sure it points toward the same experience. That’s a different skill than being the best lighting technician or the most knowledgeable art historian in the building.

The kind of vision-holder worth becoming

Seng is specific about what looks for in directors to work with. He looks for what he calls a “no ego, best idea wins” atmosphere, where his suggestions and the director’s compete on merit instead of hierarchy.

The best relationships, the ones that I seek out, are this no ego, best idea wins atmosphere of working.

He’s also worked with directors who wanted total control over every shot, and described spending eight months on a film without that kind of collaboration as a long time to live inside.

Whitney’s version of the same instinct shows up in Vital Connections, a current exhibition she’s building with neuroscientists to explore how art and creativity affect the brain. She didn’t have a template for what that exhibition should look like going in. She had a group of specialists from a completely different field, and a willingness to figure out the format together.

Where else this shows up

Neither film nor museum work is a special case. Any role responsible for turning several specialists’ work into one coherent result, an editor pulling together a team of writers, a product lead coordinating designers and engineers, runs on the same underlying skill: unifying expert work without trying to do all of it yourself.

Whether it’s a film set or a gallery floor, the hardest part of the job isn’t having the best idea in the room. It’s making everyone else’s best idea visible. You can hear the full conversations with Ken Seng in Episode 4 and Catherine Whitney in Episode 10.