WITH VERONICA ROBERTS, CANTOR ART CENTER
BEHIND THE SCENES WITH VERONICA ROBERTS, CANTOR ART CENTER
Veronica Roberts is a curator and Director of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford. A San Francisco native, she returned to the San Francisco Bay Area 2 years ago to lead the Cantor. She worked closely with Ellsworth Kelly to help realize his final work and only building, “Austin”, while a curator at the University of Texas, Austin, Blanton Museum of Art, and curated the nationally touring exhibition Converging Lines: Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt. Her most recent exhibition is Day Jobs, focusing on how artists’ day jobs inspire their work and can be a source of creative growth, and is currently on view at the Cantor through July 21, 2024. Featuring established artists such as Mark Bradford (hairstylist), Larry Bell (frame shop assistant), and Julia Scher (security systems installer), and diverse emerging artists as well, the exhibit shatters the notion of artistic genius being created in a vacuum.
I recently sat down with Veronica to chat about her path to the art world and what she’s looking to accomplish in her work as a curator and director of the Cantor.
Veronica Roberts, Director of Cantor Arts Center, courtesy of Cantor Arts Center
CL: What childhood experiences influenced your interest in art? How did you get into this world?
VR: I feel so lucky to have grown up in San Francisco because I had art as part of my culture. It was such an integral part of my education growing up. I went to high school in the city and was lucky enough to take a class called Western Civilization. What was so amazing is that it was taught by an art historian and a music historian, and part of the class was going to museums, looking at art in person, going to theater productions at local, community centers, theater houses. So it wasn't just about books and research, it was really about first-hand, direct encounters with art.
I'll never forget the field trip when we traveled to LA. I saw this incredible artwork by Felix Gonzalez Torres at the Hammer [Museum] in LA, and was just blown away. It was a work that was a pile of candy. I could see that people were popping it into their mouths, and I wasn't used to art that you could eat and touch. Then I looked at the label, and it said “Ross” and in parentheses, “T cell count”. It was at the height of the AIDS crisis. I realized this was a portrait of a lover, who was HIV positive. And so there's something very sweet and tender about this little sweet that you're eating. But then, as you're sucking on it, you realize that you're depleting it, and the T cell count is going down. And it just gave me such chills. It was such a powerful experience.
Artists just make you think about things and experience things in different ways. So at that time, I wasn't really that interested in contemporary art; we were studying much more historical work, but I could see how artists could create these works that change the way we see the world and experience it. And so I was really hooked from that class.
From there I took more art and photo classes. And then by the time I got to college, I went to Williams College which happens to have an extraordinary art history program. I ended up taking an intro class, loved it, and decided I want to be a curator.
CL: You’ve worked with a lot of different, and significant museums such as the MoMA, the Whitney, in New York City and universities like Stanford and University of Texas, Austin. How have your experiences at these different types of institutions differed or been similar?
VR: It was incredible to be exposed to the diversity of art at the Whitney and MoMA, and in all cases, I've worked at museums that collect art. So that's one thread through my career, because there are lots of curators and directors who are focused only on new commissions or exhibitions, where you're not collecting art. So I've always had collecting art as a real love and a passion and a commitment.
There are some consistent things though about a university art museum that are different from other kinds of art museums. First of all, the perks are really amazing. You get to spend time with faculty and you get to walk around with MFA students, and there's a way in which, you know, you get to feel like you're always learning. You're surrounded by smart and interesting people who want to come and see your shows and talk to you about it. Just being in that space is really a privilege.
I also really love the age of college undergrads. I think there's something so special about what art can do, and no matter who you are or where you're from, usually college is your first experience. In college, you're meeting people whose life experiences are so different from yours. As people are figuring out who they are and what they believe in, art can be this incredibly potent experience. And for many people, the college art museum might be the first museum they've really ever spent time in, or interacted with. It exposes them to a much wider way of thinking about the world and different perspectives and different backgrounds and different lived experiences. So I think there's something really special about that age that I love.
Also, college art museums allow you to take more risk, because at the end of the day, there's a lot less pressure on us to make a lot of money on admissions because guess what, we're free. We can't make any money. The pressures that colleagues feel at institutions where they have huge staffs, and I get it - they need blockbusters to fund all the programs and the staff that they have. So in a way, we have a little more freedom, and can do things that are less connected to the market and less connected to what's already been done. We can take more risks and do the things that the curatorial team is passionate about. That's a real privilege and exciting space to work in.
Narsiso Martinez, Legal Tender, 2022, from Day Jobs exhibition at Cantor Art Center
CL: What have been your goals as a curator? How has that changed over time or with the different positions?
VR: My goals have actually been very consistently the same from the minute that I started curating. I'm always thinking about the non-art audience. I've never measured success by, for example, getting a review in Artforum. How I have always thought of myself as a curator and an educator is that I want to make art more accessible and meaningful. I think art can be really impactful and consequential, and I think artists are some of the most important people in our world, in our society. But I feel like the”art world” can be very alienating and very intimidating.
I have friends who say, “Oh, I can't go to a gallery unless you're with me”, because they feel intimidated, or they feel like there's a lingo that they don’t speak, or they feel that they're intentionally being sort of pushed out. I've even felt that in this world. So for me, as a curator, I feel like I've had a very strong sense of purpose from the very beginning that I want to do shows that are going to be meaningful to a wider range of people. And that doesn't mean dumbing down - I'm not interested in that. But it doesn't mean just doing pretty things that anyone would like. It just means not ever using certain art jargon in my language or framing of things.
I do a lot of thinking about entry points into shows - what are the kinds of shows that I can create that would have a lot of entry points that people will feel connected to. One of the first shows I ever did was called Converging Lines: Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt, and those were two hard artists for some people. They're amazing artists, but it’s not easy, contemporary art. I framed it through the lens of friendship because their friendship had been so incredibly impactful for both of them. They had a deep friendship; it was not a romantic romance. There was something really beautiful about telling a story, pairing their work, but also looking at the way this younger female artist also influenced this older male artist. I felt in the literature, it was always one way - it was always about how Sol LeWitt influenced her. He and I always talked about how important her work had been. He gave her credit from the very beginning, but no one else had ever really. I think it sort of took the guard down a little bit and people felt connected to the show.
Julia Scher, Security by Julia Uniforms, 1998, from Day Jobs exhibition at Cantor Art Center
CL: I feel that for me that so much of an artwork is the story behind it from the artist and how they want people to interpret it. That’s what makes the art so interesting for me. I always appreciate a lot of description for art because then I can say, “oh, I understand it.” Then sometimes you go to an art gallery, or a museum, and there's no description, or the people aren't sharing the story with you. You miss out on that connection - it’s a missed opportunity to connect with the work in a way. So how do you share that story with a larger audience?
IVR: Oh, I hear you. I think that's why I've been very fortunate to have been able to edit and produce a lot of books and contribute to a lot of exhibition catalogs in my time. But at the end of the day, only so many people are going to read the book, and so for me, the label is the most valuable form of writing that we have, right?
When I read a really well written label, and I learned something, and it makes me look at the work differently, you gain a greater appreciation. My absolute pet peeve is when what is written is to make the author sound smart. A really good label incorporates the artist’s voice and what their interests are, just adds another layer for your appreciation and helps you see a little bit more. I spend a lot of time on the labels that are in the show, so that if you can't get a walkthrough from me personally, you can still get some of the backstory. At the end of the day, art has always been a form of storytelling. We all love stories as kids, we devour them, we want to hear them five times over. It’s fundamental to who we are.
I do think the art world has become better and more open. The stories being told by shows now are so much more exciting and varied than they were - the kinds of shows have so many more perspectives and entry points. I'm thrilled because I feel like there was a very narrow, rigid kind of art story that was being told when I was coming up. However, it's still too opaque, it's still too alienating.
But I'm hoping that shows like Day Jobs help shake that. This is a show about artists’ lived experiences, working, trying to make a living, and that work has actually had this beautiful, sometimes surprisingly profound influence on the artistic practice. It's also a sort of recognition that artists are hustling and doing multiple jobs trying to make it all work. For some of our most creative people and makers in this world, their creativity is not coming from some tortured genius as all the films would make us think they are, but coming from these everyday lived experiences that we can all connect to.
Larry Bell, Triolith-C (True Fog / Lapis / Lagoon) D, 2020, from Day Jobs exhibition at Cantor Art Center
CL: I love how human the show is - there's this element where we could all be someone who has a day job and be inspired to create something from it.
VR: The feedback has been so meaningful to me. We've gotten some feedback from people who are musicians who say, “I feel seen”. And I also hear people saying, “I've always felt a little embarrassed to talk about my day job or kind of kept it under wraps.” And the show is making people feel like they can be open about it and not ashamed. People are also talking about what their parents have done. A curator told me that her dad was a truck driver, and she just felt like the show felt honest or reflected like a mirror onto something that she wasn't seeing reflected. Those kinds of comments are really meaningful because sometimes museums feel like they're not for all of us. But they are. And these stories are all of our stories. So that's really my passion as a curator and as a director. I want to champion and nurture those stories from the team here and also from the exhibitions offered from other wonderful people in the field.
Violette Blue, Homage to Johnny, 2015, from Day Jobs exhibition at Cantor Art Center
CL: The Cantor Art Center’s collection spans such a huge range, 5000 years - you mentioned 41,000 pieces. So how do you navigate that as a director?
VR: Great question. The collection is broad and has Greek vases, Egyptian artifacts, Ethiopian crosses, and Rodin. It's pretty heterogenous, but it's not encyclopedic. We are not a civic museum that has every century represented; we don't have that kind of scope or breadth of a larger museum. I'm always thinking about playing to our strengths: you might have art from, let's say, Papua New Guinea, or you might have a lot of Chinese art in your collection. But is it good? Do you have one of the best collections of whatever that thing is? What are the works that are really exceptional in the collection? What is your public, and especially the students and the faculty? What are people wanting to see and what are they most interested in?
I would say modern/contemporary is probably the thing that people are the most interested in, and photography, specifically here, has a huge audience. There's a big audience for video and film, and we have a huge film and video community here that we need to support and nurture more. I think the next generation is much more comfortable in seeing a video, and so that's something I think we probably could do a lot better. But you can't do it all.
The other thing is that unless you have endless funds, you can't be the museum of every culture and of every time period. No matter what kind of museum you are, you have to really think about what you want to prioritize because otherwise you just spread yourself way too thin. For us, photography and new media for sure is our key. We also have a deep cut of Asian American art that is really one of the things that we are the most committed to. It's so impactful and meaningful to do that work because I see that it's not just reflecting our community, but building it. Asian American art is a very underrepresented part of the field, so it’s giving us a focus.
CL: That’s a good segue into my next question. The Asian American Art Initiative - how did that emerge as a priority?
VR: I give credit to Aleesa Alexander and Marci Kwon, who are the co-directors of the initiative and got Stanford on board. It was one of the reasons I took the job. It's not just about exhibitions and building one of the best collections of Asian American art in the world. It's also about nurturing a field, bringing archives of important artists like Ruth Asawa to Stanford - her archives happened to already be here, but we're trying to really excel in that space and nurture those artists. So that was it, Aleesa and Marci had begun thinking about this and launched it conceptually before I got here.
This is a forever initiative. It's not like a three year fellowship, where we focus on this for three years, and then turn our attention to something else. So that's really meaningful. I'm also struck by how often Elisa is called by colleagues in the field who are interested in the work she's doing. It's wonderful that so many people are eager to be a part of it. I think it's become a model for some other museums - the Smithsonian Museum in DC of American Art, they're doing really significant work in this space too. It's not about owning something, or “Stanford is the best at this” or the most important or blah, blah, blah. It's really about doing the work, and then sharing that and thinking about the bigger impact we can have.
Ruth Asawa, Untitled (LC.012, Wall Of Masks), 1966-2000, fromThe Faces of Ruth Asawa exhibition curated by Aleesa Pitchamarn at Cantor Art Center
CL: Last question. What are you hopeful for in the art world in the upcoming years?
VR: I am hopeful that we can figure out better structures and systems for artists, and better ways of nurturing and supporting artists. I see little things that we're doing as a field and bigger things that I find heartening and encouraging. I want to see more shows where it's not all well-known artists who are represented by major galleries. If you have a group show, and it's contemporary art, there better be some surprises in there. And there better be some artists who don't even have a commercial gallery. To me that's what a museum and what our place in the ecosystem can do. You should not just be reflecting the market.
I'd love to see better ways that we can compensate artists for their labor. I don't have the solutions, but I think just paying artists properly and creative people for their work is super important. I think it happens in the gallery space very well, but in the auction house space, as you know, living artists can have their work go for a million dollars and they don't see $1 of that. So I would love to see us rethink those models.
I also would love to see more shows that open up dialogue for all of us and move away from playing to an insular art world crowd. That really think about how art can connect with people where they are, in a way that feels really exciting and welcoming and not alienating.