Episode 0010: Catherine Whitney - David Hockney and the Science of Art transcript

Kendall Guillemette (KG): All right, everybody, thank you so much. today we have Catherine Whitney, who is the Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Honolulu Museum of Art. Catherine, welcome and thanks for joining us.

Catherine Whitney (CW): Thank you, Kendall. I’m excited to be here

KG: the reason that I asked you to come on is to talk about the David Hockney: Works from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation show that is currently up at the Portland Art Museum. we will get to that, but I want to dig look in the past a little bit and understand from you you get into this line of work? I in some prep, I know that you studied art studio art and art history in college, but how did you make the turn into doing this professionally and then maybe we can talk a little bit about the the path there as well.

CW: Well, how did I start? I would have to say my grandmother. We won’t go into that story, but she was one of those great nurturing maternal figures in my life who basically gave me an art kit the second I came to her house. And that was my job to make a drawing for her during the visit. So that’s how it started. fast forward college, as you said, I went in as a studio art major. it’s between medicine and studio art, but I wanted to avoid calculus as many freshmen do. and I also thought, well, you know, if I become a doctor, I’m gonna be one of those docents hanging out by the museums my whole life, not getting paid, I might as well get paid for it. So fast forward, did studio art and realized there are so many amazing artists in the world throughout the history of time that have done so much better than I could ever do. And they’re really fascinating. And this teaches me a lot about the history of the world, geography, philosophy, religion, politics. Let’s do that. So art history just kind of grabbed me. I didn’t want to go to New York City, being a gal from Maine where things are kind of quiet. I loved visiting New York, but I didn’t want to live there and I was a little intimidated. So I thought, well, DC is manageable. It’s a lot like Paris, where I had studied as a you know, exchange student. So ran to DC, somehow landed a job at the National Gallery as a just basically a administrative assistant in the conservation department, switched to museum education, which is what I thought my true love was and it still is. and then decided it was really time for grad school because I didn’t want to be doing everybody else’s work and although I learned a lot and met some really cool people. So I

KG: Okay.

CW: Went to grad school, ended up staying in DC, so did some museum work and then after ended up with a terminal master’s, thinking maybe I’ll do my PhD later, got an offer, kind of strange thing after a vacation to be an art dealer in Santa Fe. And I thought, sure, I’ll try that for a couple years. And a couple years turned into about 15 years. And raised a family, built a house in Santa Fe, loved that scene, met a lot of cool people, was there during the tech bubble, all sorts of exciting stuff happened, was there during the first recession in 2008. had a midlife crisis when my dad got sick and realized what happened to medical school. So my brother, who’s a doctor, talked me out of that and said,

KG: Yeah.

CW: Stay doing what you’re doing. You can change lives in your own way and you can save lives in your own way. So you’ll be you’ll practice for five years if you go back to school now. So so, anyways, I jumped ship back into the museum world and was a chief curator in the Midwest and then jumped ship again during COVID and am now in Honolulu and find like I’m just constantly, constantly learning in my job. So

KG: Yeah.

CW: That’s what I love about it.

KG: Yeah. Amazing. So you mentioned like going from museum to then on the more art dealer commercial side of things. what was the biggest difference there? And the the place that you went in Santa Fe, if I’m correct, it was the Gerald Peters gallery, which is Georgia O’Keeffe’s representation. And so

CW: Mm-hmm, Yeah. Yes. Right.

KG: So like what’s the was right, right, right.

CW: was, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

KG: Yeah. but what what’s the difference there from your point of view as you’re doing your work on behalf of whether it’s companies or people versus a museum where it’s more the general public What’s the biggest difference that you experienced?

CW: I think the different experience was the speed with which things happen. as an art dealer, you just kind of have to do things yesterday. we basically kept FedEx in business at that time. it was very exciting. There was a lot going on. I really loved the people part of it. And a lot of people would come back year after year, season after season, build their collection. and it was basically just talking to people about art. So that’s what I love. I was not a hard sell. the good thing about my boss at the time was he realized that there are a bunch of different personalities, and I was definitely like, give people the information, figure out, you know, live vicariously through them, obviously. My sister said to me one time, How do you distinguish between your collector’s checkbooks and your own checkbook? Don’t you get confused? And I was like, No, when someone writes a check for eight hundred and seventy-five thousand and I’m you know, paying my mortgage for eight hundred and seventy-five dollars back then. it’s different. And I know the zeros are different. It’s a work life intersection that lines you know, you don’t cross that. So, anyways, that was kind of a fun, exciting thing in my twenties and thirties. Learned a lot, realized

KG: Right. It’s different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

CW: as I said, the relationships I think were part of the most exciting thing and got to know a lot about the artworks and things like frames. You know, when you’re an academic, you don’t really I mean you might after a while, you know, when you get beyond the classroom, but you know, you don’t think about the artist frames, but you think about frames and you know works by such and such. so that was exciting and. Got to travel a lot for that. as you said, the Jerry represented O’Keefe at the end of her life and then became sort of well known for representing her. So I specialized in early American modernism and then some Southwest variants of those bigger East Coast modernists. so that was great. Got into a little bit of the Western element of American art, which I was very kind of snobby about when I got there and thought, Western art, like.

KG: Mm.

CW: Ooh, you know, but it’s not all Remington and Russell. I didn’t do that stuff at all. So yeah, I was definitely kind of this off sell who was just the information person and always considered myself a curator, even though I was a dealer. and then as I said, just kind of my dad got sick at the early aughts and two thousand tens, and I I just wanted to kind of do more with community and

KG: Okay.

CW: didn’t feel like medicine was really something I was gonna do, but I wanted to kind of make a difference and not just make one person richer. and also, you know, the economy had really tanked and it wasn’t as exciting and it was yeah, it just had changed. The auctions were really picking up, so the private gallery scene wasn’t they they weren’t getting all the the loot that they used to get and it was going to auctions. And so I jumped ship and went into museum work and had a steep learning curve there but really loved it. And

KG: And was that your first did you do curi I’m gonna butcher that word the whole time? Did you do curation prior to your art dealing or was were you s in education and conservation prior to that? So was this your first curatorial role?

CW: Curation. Yeah. It was sort of my first curatorial. you know, I had got I basically was administrative assistant for the head of conservation and for the painting and paper conservators, so learned a lot about process, then went into museum education, worked with teacher programs, and had a graduate internship in Dutch and Flemish, which was another love of mine at the National Gallery. But generally, yeah, it was sort of my first foray into museum curation. But the gallery really you had opportunity to do major, major shows. So I did major modernists, people like John Marin, Ansel Adams, O’Keefe, and regional artists, and just had a real it was really a great training ground and had a lot of catalogs we produced. so that was a great way to kind of learn to write press releases, do things fast and and then the museum world it’s just it has a lot more constraints but sort of best practices around it, right? So we wouldn’t necessarily pick up the work and show it to somebody, whereas in the gallery I could do that. So in the museum world you would want somebody to help you with that or do it for you and pack it for you. So it was nice to really be hands-on early on and then kind of learn what policy and procedures are later, although I was aware of them, I just you know hadn’t enforced them so much. it really the museum work is very, very collaborative, which I love. it takes a lot longer, but it’s both sort of you have to be aware of community engagement and what that means for the audience as well as how you’re meeting deadlines and working with your colleagues and trying to tap into what they’re best at and you know working in in a group. So it’s a lot of meetings, but I also love that environment because it’s a lot of brainstorming. So and it’s just incredibly satisfying and kind of humbling to see an exhibition that you’ve done open up in a museum and people are coming to visit it and it’s sort of your idea that all your colleagues who are professionals and amazing smart individuals are working to help get that idea on the wall. it usually transforms a little once everybody has their, you know, their head in it as you want it to. But it’s it’s it’s really exciting and then to hear and think about how people respond to it and what you could do better next time and what what’s missing and what you know what accidentally worked out. So

KG: Yeah. So this is maybe not maybe. This is definitely exposing my ignorance here. But what as a curator, like, is it what what’s the what are the different kind of roles that you fill in that? I I think what I think of is somebody sitting in a room kind of pointing, okay, yes, this, this, this, this.

CW: Mm-hmm.

KG: And. I’m sure that there’s more than that. You mentioned the collaboration. That totally makes sense. but like what are the things that you as a curator when you’re maybe two, this is a two-part question. One, when you’re working on a specific show like the Hockney show or some of the other shows you mentioned that you put together. what are kind of some of the things that you do there? But then also

CW: Just gonna set it up. Mm-hmm.

KG: as like a ongoing like s more in your role at the Honolulu Museum of Art, where you’re kind of leading the the curatorial group there. What are the types of things that you do and and what is what is a week or a month or a day is probably maybe a little too small, but what kind of things you do?

CW: Right. So I like to say that basically curators come up with the content for the exhibitions and and then we have collections teams who kind of manage the care of the collections. So as curators you sort of have a special field that you understand and you know about historically, art historically, and you try to contextualize that either art historically or make it relevant to audiences. You work at the education department. So you try to take your idea that you’re weaving together a concept or an idea. Maybe it’s one artist biography and you want to basically let people know that this artist was a spectacular artist for her time and innovated and why does it matter now, right? So I’m coming up with an idea based maybe on our permanent collection. it really depends. Maybe I’m working with other artists in another part of the country who wanna focus on somebody who’s not yet discovered or hasn’t had enough attention yet. there’s opportunities that come up, maybe it’s somebody’s private collection like Jordan’s.

KG: Mm-hmm.

CW: oftentimes museums because shipping is getting so damn expensive, especially in Hawaii or to Hawaii, you know, what are our strengths within our own museums’ holdings and what are our strengths within our community? Whether they’re different identities within the community, or they’re artist depths within the community, or there are social issues that are of importance to that community, and how can you use art to basically illustrate some of these ideas, concepts. So almost like an artist would talk about the importance of expression and to mental health or something like that. How can a curator tease what an artist is doing and why that’s important and basically use art to get people to think, if not differently, think about something in a different way or use visual or experiential.

KG: So

CW: learning.

KG: so is it fair to say. You. Come up with an outline of a story that you’re trying to tell, and then you utilize works and exhibition space. Like maybe that’s another question that I’m trying to dig into. Every exhibition space is different. Some of the shows that you’ve done have traveled around in different places. So where what’s your role on like the space itself?

CW: Okay.

KG: And using that as a means to tell the story as well as the art. Is that something that the curator like I’m trying to like build bridges in my mind of like what is this similar to? I think of a director in a film where it’s like there’s all of these different pieces that are moving under the direction of this director, but the director has the vision, it’s the story they want to tell. And so in my mind, I’m picturing the curator as that director saying, okay.

CW: Yeah. Right.

KG: We wanted to do this. This is a story we want to tell. You know, we have the different pieces, we have the exhibition space that needs to look in but this particular way. Is that right? Am I am I making things up or

CW: actually a that’s a great metaphor, yeah. you have this sort of narrative or the story you’re trying to get across or tell the story, right? And you’re using the pieces that you have and your artworks, your sculpture, your works on paper, your immersive installations are your actors, right? And yes, I’m trying to figure out other curators are trying to figure out how do these pieces both shine individually. And when you put them together, do they have another kind of semantic conversation with each other that changes things? Or in a different context, does that mean something different? I’ll use an example. I’m doing this exhibition right now that is kind of far out of my comfort zone, but extremely interesting and fascinating on the brain. And the benefit it’s called Vital Connections: Art in the Brain. And. You’ve probably seen in the news there’s a lot of new neuroscience findings about how art and creativity can enhance not only your cognitive reserve and longevity, but your physical longevity and even your epigenetics and change you almost like physical exercise and good diet and you know good sleep can be great for your your body and your wellness and delay dementia or even avoid it. So. How can I t I remember when I was first talking about this two years ago, some curators were saying, that’s so cool, but how are you gonna how is that an exhibit? And I said, I have no idea, but I’m gonna figure that out. But it’s not just me. We because it’s cross disciplinary, we’re working with an organization of neuroscientists in town. So I’m saying to them,

KG: Yeah.

CW: e. e. cummings, right? So I wanna wed these two together and tell a story. And here are the settings we have, and we have this limited space where we’re filming, and we want people to kind of feel something as they’re going through this space. And when they get somewhere we want them to have an aha aha moment or a joyful moment or a sad moment or say, I know that piece, but I’ve never thought of it that way before. so I don’t know if I’ve answered your question, but it’s it’s very much like a film. It’s but I I don’t do it myself. I need collaborators. you need people some larger museums will have exhibition designers who actually design the space. Smaller museums, curators do that.

KG: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

CW: we have graphic designers who help with the beautiful walls. yeah, it depends on the size of the museum and the capacity of the museum. So you can scale it.

KG: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s cool. I think obviously the most recent show I’ve been to was Hockney Show. So that’s first in my memory. I also went to see the Matisse show at the SFMoMA which is awesome. but I’m thinking about it and going through you mentioned like that aha moment. Is there an intention in the gallery space? Like I’m just as you’re planning it out, thinking through it, bringing people through the exhibition to a a point of that aha moment. Where’s the question here? I guess is that is that something well, is that something that’s intentional? like do you really think about like, okay, we’re gonna I’m gonna contextualize it, whether it’s like chronologically or whatever way you do that, and then bring people through the exhibition to this like here’s the this is the climax of the movie. This is the aha moment of the exhibition. Is that something that you kind of intentionally go through?

CW: What are these moments? Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s interesting because Jordan Schnitzer’s collection that we worked with that is so deep and vast. He has over five hundred Hockneys alone. And so we as you know, Catherine Love and I co-curated this exhibition at HOMA in twenty three and twenty-four. We had a completely different layout, and it was more thematic. So we had about five different sections that we brought people through and. It was slightly chronological, but we didn’t have one kind of like ta-da at the end, like this crescendo, as you say. we wanted a number of moments to kind of tell a story of what Hockney was trying to get at through different media, through different subjects, how he repeated things, what what was meaningful to him, why was he a great artist? What did he see? How did different priorities for him like mark making in printmaking versus working for the theater. How did those kind of like blow his mind and make him perceive and see differently? And how did he work those out? So that’s what we wanted to see. we kind of looked at about five different sections and we teased the idea of opposites and dualities, which is something that Christopher Knight had mentioned in his nineteen eighty eight essay for a LACMA show that on Hockney. And I was like, that is exactly what we’re trying to do here, that he has this tension, this really powerful tension in almost all of his works, regardless what the subject is, of sad and perky and colorful and and somber and still and active and animated or peopled but empty, you know. So there’s this beautiful tension in all of his work. So I wanted to kind of tease that thread and then the fact that he was constantly using technology, which even in the eighties was a Xerox copier, right? a Polaroid in the early eighties, a iPad in two thousand and nine and ten.

KG: Right.

CW: iPhone and videos at the end. So in the Portland show, we wanted to kind of arrive at that almost I call it the cubist film at the end where he’s in the Woolgate Woods. and he actually strapped a bunch of cameras to his Jeep and drove down a rural road in Northern England where he’s from and filmed from nine different cameras, speaking of movie making

KG: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

CW: what the landscape looked like. And he was trying to illustrate how cubists are illustrating how we look and perception. And it’s constantly changing and flickering and, you know, merging in our brain. And depending on your mood, where you are, your perspective that you’re standing, what you’re thinking of, your memory, it’s gonna change a little bit. And it’s we see it as one flat, solid object. But art is very rarely one solid flat object. So he’s constantly kind of, you know, poking holes and all these assumptions of what is a artistic surface, what is a single point view in a camera in the Renaissance, and exploring that through technology.

KG: Yeah. I I mean, one of the first experiences I had with Hockney was in New York and there was an exhibition of one of his photograph collages and I think it was like a telephone poll or something like that. And I walked up to it and I was just like, I don’t know what this is, but I love it. And I’m like blown away by it. And that’s that was kind of the intro that I had. And and so you mentioned the iPad drawings. I think that that’s something that

CW: Yeah.

KG: I don’t know, different conversations that I’ve had and and certainly in when you’re looking at it on a online on a screen, it’s a very different experience than in at the exhibition. They’re blown up, they’re huge, you know, some of them and and so it’s it’s a very different I found it very different experience to experience it in a the scale. And was that something that. Yeah, I don’t know. I guess I I guess I’d maybe just wanted to say that. I thought that that was cool. it gave me a different understanding and appreciation for those iPad drawings, which you know can be seen as pretty elementary and you know, in terms of like the mark making specifically. It’s not brushwork, it’s not all of these types of things. but especially seeing it at the scale, the larger scale, it allowed me to see the. I guess maybe what I felt like more what he was saying, the the color, the light, like that w was I don’t know, that showed to me a little more when it the scale was changed. I don’t know if that makes any sense or not, but

CW: Great. I think he’s sort of saying, why can’t iPad art be in a museum? Right. And by blowing everything up large, I mean, that’s something that O’Keeffe used to say, you know, people don’t really notice a flower, do they? Well, I’m gonna make sure they stop and smell this flower or notice this flower. And I think he’s kind of getting at the same thing. Like, how spectacular is the kind of circular radiation of one raindrop. on a sleepy pond on a foggy day in England, you know, near near this farmhouse. how spectacular is that? And how have artists across time, including Japanese printmakers, how have they tackled this? And, you know, what is water? What is reflection? And how can I play with that with technology? And why shouldn’t that be here? And he’s really, in my mind, he’s really tapping he had just this incredible sense of awe in nature. Like I feel like he was like this little boy in a candy store when he went outside or saw his friends or dogs, whatever. And he just he just had this vivaciousness, this kind of I don’t know, radical excitement for life, r seemingly right up to the end. And sadly we should mention that he just passed about a month and a half ago. which is amazing that

KG: Yeah.

CW: Portland had the show up. You know, he was with us in the world at the beginning and onto his next journey at, you know, by the time the show closes. And it just shows his kind of without sounding trying not to sound cliche, but I want to say zest for life, literally. He he just magnified everything and he said, You want to see that? Well, how about this? And

KG: Yeah.

CW: one of the things he said was he was talking about you know the pieces he called them the totems those kind of tree trunks that were done in bright colors in springtime old gay woods in the spring and you’re just looking at the stump but he’s like yeah but what about springtime around it and this looks a little bit like death and decay but even those stumps will come back to life every spring and there’s always this cycle and there’s always hope and

KG: Mm-hmm. Right.

CW: He said it’s almost like you want to kind of get to that point in spring when when nature has an erection. That’s what you want to get to, that like that budding, bursting, beautiful time when you’re just like, wow, that’s I forgot what that’s like, you know? And he just was almost like a little kid. And I don’t know how he had that all the time, but he somehow managed to not I’m I’m sure a lot of his works are stale, but it. His works just seem so fresh, even if he’s just doing a funny little Grimm’s fairy tale line drawing or something. But he just got a great sense of humor, you know. And he went through a lot. He went through a lot of tragedy, but he just he realized how to process it and that there were some good things among amongst death and dying, there’s also life and hope. So

KG: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I found him in different interviews that I’ve listened to and and just to be that that love of life, that cheekiness, you know, always kind of being a little cheeky and subversive. that that was always something that was refreshing to me.

CW: Yeah.

KG: So when you were putting this show together, did you have an opportunity to speak with him or work with him at all?

CW: know, I never did, which was really sad. I know strangely, there’s a woman who’s n the director of the foundation who was an old colleague from the Gerald Peters gallery from way back, which we didn’t even know until we started the show. And I was like, What? and then we of course met Doug Roberts, who is a friend and kind of art advisor and

KG: Okay.

CW: he was great friends with Jordan and has advised Jordan and other collectors and has been a lifelong friend of David’s. And so I feel like I kind of got to know a little bit of him through Doug and through Kimberly Davis, who’s his dealer at LA Louver who’s worked with him for, I don’t know, maybe five decades, four decades at least. and the stories and the anecdotes are incredible. But sadly I never I didn’t know him. And but I I don’t know. I just

KG: Yeah. Yeah.

CW: kinda love that I can’t know him, but I feel like there’s still so much to know about him. And I would have loved to you know, when people say, Who would you like to go to breakfast if you could bring anybody back and have breakfast with anybody, I would have breakfast with Hockney.

KG: Yes. the shows and and different work that you do are most of the artists living or not they’re not living

CW: Yeah, no, that’s a that’s a good question. I traditionally I’ve always dealt in deceased artists, historic artists. So like my academic background is American art early modernism, so about eighteen ninety to nineteen forty. And I love early modernism, that kind of change of the twentieth century. when I was in the Midwest, I was really. Captivated by kind of social realism and the Dust Bowl era and there’s just so much great regional history in the places I’ve lived from the Southwest to the Midwest and Maine, you know, a lot of great authors and writers from there. So I I love that the kind of regional aspect and trying to delve into that a little bit. But I have traditionally dealt with historic or deceased artists. But then I started doing more and more contemporary when I moved to the Midwest. I think just as a chief curator, sometimes, you know, sometimes you have a contemporary curator on staff, sometimes you don’t. So sometimes I’d have to fill in or work with the curator. and I just find it right now, I find it probably the most interesting to me is to work with living artists right now. Cause I just feel like there’s a lot of great tributes that have happened. And I just feel like we’re living in such a a moment. Dot dot dot. It’s like a dot dot dot dot moment. And I feel like there’s so much that needs to be said that we can’t that people are trying to suppress and there’s so many indigenous artists, women, artists of color. LGBTQ There’s so many people that haven’t had their say, immigrant artists, foreign-born individuals. and there’s just in Hawaii, so many Kanaka, you know, native Hawaiian artists that there’s just like this kind of traditional white male culture has really just dictated so much of how we see our history, how we see our own history, art history. colonization and there’s just there’s just so much that needs to be said and expressed. And so I find that really exciting because there’s just still so much. And there are so many scholars who have written, you know, over and over in O’Keefe. You know, we know all about O’Keefe She’s not going to say anything new, but, you know, what about some of the artists from the Southwest who loved Pedernal, you know, that was a sacred mountain that she said was hers and that God said she she could have it if she painted enough. No, it actually belonged to somebody else before she got to the Southwest and still does or should. So you know I just find myself kind of tending towards we have two great contemporary curators at the Honolulu Museum of Art. Catherine Love was our assistant associate curator who I curated Hockney with and Tyler Cann is our contemporary senior curator. They do such great work.

KG: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

CW: But so I try not to like get in their way. But there’s just so many artists, women in particular, that I’m really excited about and there’s so much out there that I just find myself kind of getting out of my lane. You know, the historic lane. or just trying to pull them together because sometimes I can make sense of stuff referring it back to the turn of the last century. So

KG: I know that you sit on the board of the Vilcek Foundation, which really centers and elevates immigrant artists. Is d was what you were just talking about. Can you maybe speak a little bit about what that foundation does?

CW: Yeah. that’s a spectacular foundation that I’m really honored and excited to be a part of. I’ll just explain really quickly. Jan and Marica Vilcek and Marica just passed herself right around New Year’s of this year. they were Czechoslovakian immigrants who came to New York and basically defected in nineteen sixty eight, came to New York City and Jan was a biomedical researcher and got a job at NYU and Marica started working at the Met because she had a degree in art history and was basically working in the registers area with Stieglitz in that collection, Alfred Stieglitz, O’Keeffe’s husband and their circle. And in right around the late 90s, Jan was trying to find a cure for sepsis in his lab at NYU and. And he and his team discovered a pharmaceutical that basically helped with a severe inflammation Remicaid which is a very high-selling pharmaceutical right now. It was sort of the secondary effect of that, which was earth shattering to a lot of people, but he sort of suddenly came into wealth that he hadn’t had before. And both he and his wife had never had children. They had a nice apartment in New York, but they didn’t, you know, have yachts or cars or fancy houses in Aspen. And they just they have worked really hard their whole lives and were really committed and passionate about biomedical science and the arts. And struggling artists, and in particular immigrants, and how hard everybody has it in the United States, but particularly foreign-born individuals who come here. So they set up a foundation to give awards to artists, scientific researchers, and artists is a large term that can mean poets, dancers, culinary artists, visual artists, who are basically just trying to do good stuff and are starting to do good stuff. they give major, major awards for those who have made significant contributions to the United States, as well as kind of young, promising artists and biomedical researchers who are onto something that they just basically want to give them money to continue. And they don’t say you have to do anything. Here’s money, keep going, you’re doing a good job. And so it’s just I am

KG: Yeah.

CW: so honored to be on that board because it’s just they give money to people who are doing the hard stuff who are working in a really hard environment that’s hard even harder than the you know natural born strugglers right so so anyways it’s a great great organization and Jan’s still with us and but obviously retired and the ed Rick just

KG: Right.

CW: works nonstop but is really committed to what he does and gets a lot of great advisors and just does really incredible work. And I wish there were more foundations like this around.

KG: That sounds amazing. The I I I’m kind of picking up on a little thread that is kind of bringing together and maybe it’s I don’t think it’s probably happenstance, but the medicine, biology and the art, like you mentioned that you were either gonna go to med school or art stuff. is that something that that you still feel drawn to? You mentioned the collaboration. It is the show coming up that you s you mentioned with the Brain Health Applied Research Institute? So right.

CW: Yes, yes. So that exhibition, Vital Connections, that looks at basically the the benefits of art and creativity through the lens of neuroscience and some of the latest findings. and as I said, that’s a kind of cross-disciplinary exhibition. we’re literally working with clinicians, neurosurgeons, neuroarchitects to use the science and say this is what’s happening to your brain and your body when you look at this art or when you interact with this art and this is how it’s beneficial to you. We’ve all kind of known intuitively that art’s good for us, it makes us feel better. But this is kind of saying, why is that? What’s happening? and then kind of suggesting some practices you can do that will help. And just reinforcing, yes, it is good to work with your hands, you know, whether you’re knitting, whether you’re carving, whether you’re singing in a group, it’s good for you, it feels good for a reason. keep going, right?

KG: Yeah.

CW: And it’s not just making art, it’s or singing or I mean it’s going to a symphony, it’s going to an art museum. It’s basically stimulating, you know, beholding art or making art. It’s basically stimulating various parts of your brain at different times, being exposed to things that are new, things that are challenging, things that you know, we were talking about awe, like Hockney’s sense of awe in nature, stuff that gives you goosebumps or chicken skin, as they would say in Honolulu.

KG: Okay.

CW: or in Hawaii. but just stuff that fires those neurons because when that happens, when you get those really salient experiences in this, particularly in multi-sensory environments, you’re activating different parts of the brain. You’re like literally lifting weights with your brain. You’re like working out different muscles in your brain and you’re firing different neural connections that then build new connections. So when something fires it can stimulate neuroplasticity, which means the the ability to make more connections and more nerves. And, you know, sort of like when a forest is really rich and lush and a tree dies in one area, often branches will come around and compensate for that dead area. and whether they’re roots or canopy going around to like protect the forest, the same thing can happen in your brain and we’re constantly rewiring if we’re exposed to novel, rewarding and slightly challenging things. So that’s what this is. It’s saying go ahead, go to the symphony, support the arts. It’s good for you. It’s literally good for your brain and your body and here’s why. And can you feel this? You know, does that make you feel good? And it’s in even things that are tragic or fearful, you know, we’ve back to the movies, you know, if you’re looking at a

KG: That’s so cool. It’s it’s it’s literally good for your brain. Yeah.

CW: horror film or a really, really sad like Sophie’s Choice or something that’s, you know, really painful, your brain can tell that, you know, even though it might be a true story, not Sophie’s Choice, but a film you’re watching, your brain knows that it’s it’s it’s not happening to you there and you’re not in danger, even though you can kind of get into that whole experience and you can be empathetically saddened or scared or enlightened or happy from the film. so you’re having these experiences, but it’s in a safe environment. so even if you have kind of a tragic experience, that can actually make you feel better later because it’s just again, it’s giving you these kind of I mean, we were meant to have emotions, right? We were meant to do that. And it’s almost like children, it they kind of rehearse in play groups for

KG: Mm-hmm.

CW: challenges later in life or conflicts later in life. think it was Jonathan Haidt who said, you know, he talked about the the anxious generation that we’ve gone from like a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood. And the problem with not having those childhoods in the neighborhood that you have to get along with everybody face to face, you know, you can just ghost them on the phone. Well you’re actually building new neurons and new strategies with play. Same thing with art. You’re kind of vicariously building social strategies and even mental and physical capabilities by having these experiences.

KG: that’s fascinating. But so interesting.

CW: So back to your science back to your science and art question. I don’t know, when I was a kid, you know, you take those tests with your high school guidance counselor and it said I should either be an art therapist or sell pharmaceuticals. So I was like, I’ll sell art and no, I don’t know. I’ve always been fascinated in psychology, I guess. and so and it’s so relevant right now with

KG: Yeah. One of those two. Yeah.

CW: this new situation of loneliness and you know, maybe we know too much now about psychology and behavioral science, but you know, this generation having two young adults right now, I’ve seen how hard it is to adapt to the world that, you know, we have global warming, we have very unstable politics, we have war, we have so you know haves and have nots and it’s just a struggle. So, you know, what can we do that makes us feel better, that helps us make a difference, that helps us communicate where we’re coming from. I feel like science and art have always been strange bedfellows since way way back. The Greeks even, you know, prescribed poetry for headaches and things like that or, you know, maltempers. So I think. People have always known that they do go hand in hand. It’s just exciting now with brain scans and imagery and longitudinal studies now that we can actually pinpoint the data in the science through technology to to know why it is good for you and how it is activating your brain and what is it doing to your body. so I just think that’s absolutely fascinating. And you know, who who doesn’t wanna listen to a brain surgeon, right? I just that’s stuff’s fascinating. So

KG: Yeah, I mean, yeah, because when you think about that, or like when I think about neurology and brain science, like it feels like we know so much more than we used to, and also we don’t know anything. Like there’s still different bits that we’re like, Yeah, we don’t know. Like this the brain works this way, but we don’t really know why or whatever. And so I think that just

CW: Right. Yeah. Exactly.

KG: Like you said, that sense of wonder, like kind of that’s another piece. The sense of wonder, it’s like that sense of wonder can be present in the sciences as well as the arts. And I think that that’s a really cool, cool thing to think about. And I feel like the the more the people that I’ve like listened to or seen who quote unquote know the most have the most sense of wonder because they

CW: Mm. Interesting.

KG: th you know, they they know enough to know like, yeah, there’s mystery. We don’t know everything to know about the brain. And so, yeah, maybe I don’t know, like let’s figure it out or try it or whatever. And in a similar way, in an artistic sense, like be having that wonder that we talked about with Hockney and and that that like you said, like there is overlap there and and there is some consistencies that aren’t necessarily super apparent that it it’s really neat.

CW: Absolutely. And curiosity, I think, is the other, like substitute the word wonder for curiosity. And, you know, scientists are always trying to like prove or disprove something, a theory. And I think artists are trying to do the same thing, you know, whether they’re just capturing something that made them feel a certain way or that is a memory or an emotion or place they live, or create a new story, you know, to make sense of something. It’s it’s just like how do you articulate how something works? I think you’re absolutely right,

KG: so we’ve come to the point in time where it’s time for you, Catherine, to ask the question. What question do you have for me and or our listeners?

CW: Well, I was gonna steal one from a podcast I heard on a related subject about two days ago that I thought, ooh, that’s a good one. But then that we started talking about who would you go to breakfast with? What historic figure would you go to have breakfast with? So can I ask two? Okay. So my first one for you, Kendall, is who would you go to breakfast with? Somebody that is either actually it could be somebody who’s still living that you just haven’t met yet.

KG: Yeah. Sure. No rules.

CW: Or might not ever meet, or somebody who’s long gone from the earth. But who who would you have breakfast with and why?

KG: Question. I think I would probably say I mean there’s a lot of celebrities or art you know artists or throughout the passage of time and history. But I think I probably would say my great grandmother. she I I knew her growing up and she passed away when I was 16, but as now an adult to be able to sit down with her and have a conversation. you know, she raised a family as a single mother through the depression. You know, so it’s just like, man, that woman’s got stories that I I’m sure that I only know the tip of the iceberg about. And so from a historical point of view that would be interesting. But I think also from a personal history point of view, that would be fascinating and interesting for me as well. So

CW: Hmm. I’m sure she’d be touched to hear that. Well was she was she born here or did she immigrate from somewhere else?

KG: Grandma McNett, shout out. Yeah. Yeah, she was born in Michigan. yeah, so and lived in Michigan her whole life. So that’s where I’m like my family is from. Yeah. all right. Well what’s the n what’s the other one?

CW: The other question, and again, I’m borrowing this from a podcast, and I’m sorry I can’t remember exactly, but I think it was I think it was the Happiness Lab with Lori Santos, who’s a professor at Yale, clinical psychiatrist who looks at obviously psychology and interviews a lot of people. And she was interviewing either she I can’t remember who it is. It was a woman psychiatrist, psychologist, and they got on the topic of mythological. creatures. And they said if you could have a mythological creature for a pet, what would you pick?

KG: I would say probably a pegasus. This is assuming that this is actually a mythological creature and not somewhere hidden away. but I would probably say a Pegasus. riding a horse. Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. riding a horse that can fly would be pretty fun. I think that that would be pretty neat. Yeah. Yeah.

CW: Isn’t there one at the Portland Zoo? Yeah. That’s super cool. That’s super cool. Great.

KG: What about you? What was your what came to your mind when you heard that question?

CW: Well, I was considering a griffin or a unicorn. So but so we’re kind of in the same horse horse family. Yeah. But a griffin would be hard to hide, I think. So yeah, but I mean you can go from like little like fairies on up to dragons, you know?

KG: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Right. Yes. Yeah, there there’s a that there’s a lot of a lot of real estate to play with there. That would be that that’s a fun question. I wanna circle back to something you said earlier and relate it to some of the work. on the Hockney show. So you talked about community engagement as a part of the role of of kind of what you do. I looked when I was looking at the Portland Art Museum website. There there was like, I don’t know, 12 different like community classes, seminar, the these types of things. Is that something that. You conceive of you and a group of people, or is that something that’s put on by the that whatever the location is the museum that you’re you’re at?

CW: Yeah. So in this case, I’m actually a contract curator for the Portland Art Museum. So they hired me to extend the Hockney show that we did in Honolulu from Jordan’s collection. So we basically doubled it in Portland and they wanted and we added another section or two. And I have to say the layout was completely different in both places, which was really exciting. And they worked also with a private design firm called Plus and Greater Than that’s based in Portland.

KG: Okay.

CW: which was really they were so fun to work with and they conceived of all the kind of peaky perspective holes. so that kind of thematic glue that we had in Honolulu was gone in Portland, I think to a great benefit. It was so different. you didn’t have the cohesive thematic thing, but I saw individual paintings so much more in a more pronounced way.

KG: Mm-hmm.

CW: Than I had before. And I almost had new interactions with these pieces I knew so well. So applause to them for that. It was just two different ways you can do it. But it was, it was also a hard space. It was two different floors, just completely different, which was super exciting to see. But their staff, they have a fabulous staff. they work so hard. They’re always like emailing on the weekends and everything. I was like, my gosh. But just their curatorial collections design team.

KG: Yeah.

CW: And their educators are amazing. So I cannot take any credit for the Portland programs. Stephanie Parrish is the head learning and engagement there. and they do all that. She’s got a great team. so I can’t take any credit for that, but they do great, great work in Portland. And I have to shout out to Portland that we had an opening panel with Jordan and Kimberly Davis, Hockney’s Dealer, and Doug Roberts, one of his dear friends.

KG: Yeah. Sure.

CW: a lot of personal anecdotes and stories. almost 900 people showed up. And I was like, Portland’s audience, art audiences rock. That was a real good show. I was like, wow, that’s impressive that people are that invested and excited. And that was really exciting for me to see. So they obviously do a real good job and reach a lot of people on different levels. So

KG: Yeah.

CW: I think a lot of museums are trying to target you know, whole communities but subcultures within communities too. and just, you know, who who can we get out? Who can who can we talk to? Who who wants to participate, who maybe doesn’t even think of going to the museum, you know, let’s make it sort of a social center or community center. but they do really great programs there. So can’t take credit for that one.

KG: Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was really neat to see that that there was so much programming around that was supplementary to the exhibit itself. so I thought that was really cool. if anybody catches this and is able to get to Portland before it closes July twenty sixth is the last day. I can

CW: July twenty sixth is the last day. Yep.

KG: Wholeheartedly recommend it. I actually went the day after he passed, unbeknownst to me. I was actually driving into Portland and talking to my sister on the phone. And she’s like, Did you hear that David Hockney passed? And I was like, No. I’m like, I’m literally on my way to the museum. Like, I’m like, no, I didn’t. That’s wild. so yeah, I was like first in line the next morning, and it was

CW: Wow.

KG: It kind of was a very interesting kind of tone in the gallery. you know, kind of very somber, but i it for me it was like such a it was a celebration of his life because it was such a a fun thing to see and experience. But yeah, so that was a that was a trip. That was a very interesting time to be able to experience that exhibition. But

CW: Well, that’s

KG: if you have the opportunity, highly recommend it. I thought it was awesome. and also so you mentioned the the show previous. that toured around to different areas is like a few different spots. I think a friend of mine saw it when it was in Palm Springs. So thought it was awesome. Yeah.

CW: Great, great. Yeah. And every community might emphasize a little bit differently what they wanna emphasize. Like I know in Palm Springs they did want to emphasize you know, his identity coming out as a gay man in nineteen sixty when that was really hard to do. And how did this ode to Cafefi, who was one of the early first early, you know, kind of out homosexual poets.

KG: Yeah. Right.

CW: And he did a tribute to him, some imaginary, some based on his own friends and boyfriends. And he did it in 66, but he waited till 1967 when the UK decriminalized homosexuality, right? So he was right on the cusp and he, you know, they wanted to kind of pull that out more. but it just there’s so much there. There’s stuff for dog lovers, there’s people who love Van Gogh, there’s elements of that and Picasso and theatre and opera. There’s there’s just so much there and that’s really beautiful to hear what you said about going the day after and he would have he would have I I don’t know. I can’t say he would have been touched, but I I think he probably would have smiled with a little glimmer in his eye that people were you know, he would have been like, what are all the faces? Like, how fun, you know, he he he would have been more like, you know, it’s people around me that are special, you know, so

KG: Yeah, yeah. Right.

CW: that that’s probably a very memorable experience for you. I was gonna ask you why why you were so taken by the show, but so that’s that’s really great to hear and kudos to your sister for telling you.

KG: I know. I would have I would have showed up there and been unaware. But yeah, I think like I mentioned, I had previous experience with Hockney in New York and then in my education I was working on a print and my professor was like and I was trying to represent water. And he was like, You should really check out Hockney. And I was like, Okay, cool. And I looked at it. And so the piece kind of was I don’t know about a homage, but like had elements of of some of the water stuff that he had done. and so I definitely have a a special place in my heart for David Hockney. And so this was the first show that I’d seen that was just his work. I you know, I had seen other of his work up in different places, but this was so that was that was an exciting thing for me. But yeah, it was it was a great experience.

CW: I think the Jordan. Schnitzer Family Foundation, that’s exactly what they want to do. They want to try to get all this artwork that Jordan can never enjoy himself because he’s got so much of it and he wants to get it out there across the country so people can have these aha moments with these great artists. And often in museums that can’t afford, you know, a painting show. So and Hockney was as much a printmaker as he was a painter. So you can get the full understanding of who he was as an artist through his prints and multiples. because they’re very painterly, right? And very experimental. and s the perspective is, you know, it’s much more than a sheet of paper, right? As you know. So so I think that’s something that also the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation and Jordan himself try to do is to to get to more people across the country and not just keep it in Portland or have the shows in New York. So yeah.

KG: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. That’s so cool. yeah, so where like what do you want people to know? This is your time to

CW: About this show or about the Honolulu Museum of Art or what?

KG: All of it. Whatever look plug, plug away, whatever you want to plug or give invitations or whatever. your your time to

CW: My platform. Well, I just want to tell every I want to tell Portlanders. first of all, I want to thank Jordan for sharing his collection and allowing me to work on this. I want Portland to know that you guys have an awesome city, would you know, and an amazing museum, and what a hardworking, awesome, committed staff and new expansion there. So check that out if you haven’t. Honolulu Museum of Art. Everybody who comes is like, whoa, I had no idea. So come. see what it’s all about, right? And we have a brand new director who’s going to be starting in September, David Odo. and we’re celebrating our centennial next year. so there is a lot. We have a global collection of over fifty five thousand pieces and major works. We’re gonna be really digging in and really celebrating arts of Hawaii that year. And we just have everything from really, really strong. Japanese and Asian art to American, European to contemporary and we try to show all of it all the time. So there’s a lot to explore there. more so than just the beaches and great hikings and great weather. So so come on over and I’ll give you guys a tour. Ask for Catherine Whitney. There are two Catherines in the curatorial department. Catherine Love will help you out too but yeah come on to Honolulu and but don’t touch the monk seals and

KG: Yeah. Put the

CW: Be respectful of the the land and the water.

KG: Awesome, that’s great. Like that’s such a it’s so interesting. Like like you said, I’m sure people go to Honolulu all the time and don’t even doesn’t even register that that would be a great opportunity. But that so that’s that’s amazing. I’ve never been to Hawaii, but when I come when I come, I will definitely take you up on the invitation. That sounds that sounds great.

CW: Okay, well here you go.

KG: Thank you so much for coming on, Catherine. I’ve had a blast.

CW: Thank you, Kendall. I appreciate your kindness and your invitation.