Exhibitions at the Spencer Museum of Art:
here-ing, 2022 to present
In partnership with the Spencer Museum and Kansas Biological Survey and Center for Ecological Research, artist Janine Antoni’s new work, here-ing, is a labyrinth in the shape of the anatomy of the human ear. At the heart of the project is an invitation for the public to return to the body through intimately relating to the land. This project is ongoing.
Miller & Shellabarger, Untitled (PinkTube), 2023
Miller & Shellabarger, Untitled (Pink Tube). 2003 to present, photo by Ryan Waggoner © Spencer Museum of Art 
Miller & Shellabarger, Untitled (Pink Tube).2003 to present, photo by Ryan Waggoner © Spencer Museum of Art
Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger, a married artist couple, have been performing this work for 20 years. This is a lifelong artwork in which they simultaneously crochet at opposite ends of a long tube of pink yarn. The artists have agreed that when one of them is no longer able to perform, the other will unravel the tube, which will also be a public performance. The piece was performed at the Spencer Museum of Art on Friday and Saturday, April 28 and 29, 2023. The performance culminated in the public discussion, “Performing Couples,” with Miller & Shellabarger and Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens. The conversation was a collaboration among the Kansas City Art Institute, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Spencer Museum of Art.
Collective Entanglements, 2022
In the physical sciences, entanglement refers to sets of data that cannot be described independently of one another. In a more general sense, it refers to a complicated relationship or complex situation. It can be very useful in describing interdisciplinary inquiry, as well.
Artist Janet Biggs, mathematician Agnieska Miedlar, and physicist Daniel Tapia Takaki collaborated on this project using time-based media to explore questions in high energy physics and applying novel mathematical techniques to the production of video and performance. This is the first group supported by the Integrated Arts Research Initiative whose interdisciplinary collaborators produced work collectively.
knowledges, 2019
Art is a form of knowledge that contributes to many fields of inquiry. knowledges rethinks the academic art museum as an active participant in a university’s research community. The exhibition’s title is intentionally lowercase and plural to emphasize that knowledge does not only happen in scholarly publications, laboratories, and lecture halls. In this spirit, the Spencer Museum of Art has commissioned four contemporary artists to make work that corresponds to four different areas of research supported by the Museum’s Integrated Arts Research Initiative: data visualization, immigration, social histories, and ecologies, all broadly conceived. The exhibiting artists who have made work in conversation with these areas of research are Assaf Evron, Danielle Roney, Fatimah Tuggar, and Andrew S. Yang.
Social Histories, 2018
This inquiry for the Integrated Arts Research Initiative (IARI) included installations, performances, and experimental lectures with Mohau Modisakeng, Adrian Stimson, and Tina Takemoto. The interdisciplinary collaborative exchange looked at how we research and understand social histories, including the history of slavery, the impact of US boarding schools and Canadian residential schools on Indigenous peoples, and the wartime incarceration of queer Japanese Americans. The work was published as “Social Histories: An Inquiry from the Integrated Arts Research Initiative” in Art Journal Open‘s Pedagogies.
Paul Harfleet’s Pansy Project
As a transition between Terra Anima and Social Histories, and in support of the milestone research exhibition Big Botany curated by Stephen Goddard, Paul Harfleet brought his Pansy Project to Lawrence, Kansas, where he lectured about his work raising awareness for homophobic, gender-based, and transphobic abuse, gave away 300 pansies in exchange for listening to the story of the project, and did a reading of his book Pansy Boy.
Dialogues: Christopher Beard and Elizabeth Turk
Funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, paleontologist and sculptor discuss their respective materials through museum display and public dialogue. Cases in the Brousseau Center for Learning were used to put their objects in conversation. After being installed, Beard and Turk arranged the objects prior to their talk.
Exhibiting artists and researchers: Jost Amman, Gaston Deblaize, Stephen Hasiotis, Dan Hirmas, Ana Mendieta, Claire Pentecost, Andrew Ross, Alan Sonfist
Exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2016-2017):
Diana Thater: The Sympathetic Imagination (curatorial lead for Chicago iteration)
MCA Screen: Camille Henrot Grosse Fatigue
BMO Harris Bank Chicago Works: Andrew Yang from MCA Chicago on Vimeo.
Exquisite Exhibit: Parlour Games from the Studio Artist Program
In 2014 I was hired by the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center to curate an exhibit selecting artists from the past 10 years of their studio artist program. Using seven walls in the galleries, I assigned three artists to each and asked for a large-scale exquisite corpse. The exquisite corpse has been described as a visual (or literary) representation of the unconscious personality of the group. And so the exhibit offered an unconscious representation of the groups of artists and the ACAC’s studio program from the last decade. The exhibit opened in conjunction with the ACAC’s annual Art Party fundraiser and was supported in part by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Party attendees were given the chance to identify as many local artists as possible.
ShedSpace
A grassroots, art-in-community project that traveled through intown Atlanta neighborhoods for five years (2000-2004). Sponsored at various times by Art Papers, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Dogwood Brewery, LUBO Fund, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia. ShedSpace was originally inspired by artist Ethel Shipton’s The Project Room Space at the Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio, Texas.
Atlanta Celebrates Photography’s 2006 Public Art Project, Serial City
This was the first curated public art project for Atlanta Celebrates Photography in which I invited Matt Haffner to return to his wheat pasting street work.
Matt Haffner’s “Serial City” Video from matt haffner on Vimeo.
Curatorial Projects for the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia
2005
Origins: Andrew Ross Installations, curator of a solo exhibit of works by Andrew Ross
The Last Taboo, exhibition director and essayist. Surviving Taboo collective member, Larry Jens Anderson, curated a final group show under the Taboo name. There was also an archival component that documented the collective’s years of work together.
2004
Striking Comparisons, co-curator and essayist. A comparison of works from MOCA’s permanent collection.
The Georgia 7, co-curator and essayist. A selection of seven emerging artists from across the state.
OTHER PROJECTS:
2010
“Remember Me, Forget Me” Fall 2010, Issue #3, Journal of Sexual Homos (The JOSH)
John Q guest curated this issue as a way to put our public intervention series, Memory Flash, into conversation with other queer work interested in memory and place.
2007
“Where is the School?”
This was a three-part collaboration with artists Irina Botea, Ben Fain, and Laurie Palmer for F-news magazine at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
2005
Horumuz Minina: New Interactive Video
This was an installation about the artist’s response to the war in Iraq on the advent of his daughter’s birth at Garage Projects in Castleberry Hills Arts District.
2002/2003
Triple Point
Two annual exhibits that exposed the work of three contemporary artists (2002: Ashley Benton, Grady Haugarud, Travis Pack; 2003: Drew Conrad, Brian Holcombe, Victoria Martin-Gilly)
2002
Saltworks Project Room
Bi-monthly installations in the Project Room at Saltworks Gallery‘s original location on Angier Avenue.
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