Alumni Spotlight: Meet Margaret Winslow, MA ‘08

We met last week via Zoom to talk about her time at the Neuberger. Here’s a part of our conversation:

How and why did you decide to attend Purchase College’s Art History M.A program?
I had already been accepted to SUNY Stony Brook. I was working here at the Delaware Art Museum as a curatorial assistant and I found a mailing about Purchase’s Master’s program. It described the exact experience that I wanted: a focus on modern and contemporary art theory and criticism; proximity to New York; and especially the faculty who were there at that time … Michael Lobel and Tracy Fitzpatrick, with her dual role in art history and at the museum. It was a perfect program for me, so I applied and decided to go there instead.

How did you decide to work in the field of curation, out of the possible visual arts industry positions?
I’m interested in objects and in supporting and fostering the connection between the viewer and the objects. What I learned after my time at the Delaware Art Museum is that I wanted to extend that relationship to the artist, as well. So, nurturing that experience between the viewer and the artist. I knew I wanted to add a strong art history, theory, and criticism program to my previous work so I could then come back into the curatorial field ideally. Gratefully, I am back here.

Did you have a concentration within the Master’s program?
I had the opportunity to focus my master’s work on a curatorial project; working with the collection at the Neuberger, and then presenting both an exhibition in the museum and a large written component. That kind of experience, certainly at the master’s level, was not very common. I worked with Tracy in her Museum Studies class. Having the opportunity because of her appointment between the Neuberger, and the art history faculty, I was able to work with her and do research on objects in the collection. It supported all that earlier curational experience I had but then really propelled my practice forward.

What was the exhibition you put together for the Neuberger as a curatorial fellow?
I ended up working with a print portfolio that was published in 1974/75 at the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation. I love the 1970s and doing that fellowship and concentrating on that body of work combined my interest in visual and performance art. Then being able to present that in the Neuberger has had such a such an impact on the work that I do now. The portfolio brought together the visual artists who had created sets, costumes, or in some cases, graphics for Merce Cunningham Dance Company. So those visual artists – including Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, and Robert Morris – made prints that the foundation sold. The exhibition looked at the collaborative efforts between Merce and all of the visual artists.

I worked with the company to identify some of those key performances for which the artists had created the costumes and sets. “RainForest” is one of the well-known ones … those are the silver Mylar floating pillars that Andy Warhol created that Merce and the other dancers danced through for that piece. I had probably four or five of those dance pieces on film looped in the gallery space so that when the visitor came in they got a full sense of what this context was.

Read related article by Merce Cunningham: “Collaborating with Visual Artists”

Do you have a curatorial focus today?
I do at the Delaware Museum. We are a collection that is of and by this region, meaning that it represents the collective interests of this community. Included in the collection are many works of art that were created by artists who either were born here, lived here, or studied here at the University of Delaware and in Delaware State. I put that work in a larger context. It’s thinking about our permanent collection and operating on the national and the international art scale.

My work as a curator is heavily influenced by the time I spent as a public ally through the AmeriCorps program. It trains individuals for nonprofit work dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion. So, my work as a curator is heavily influenced by that commitment in our collections and exhibitions. Social justice is also a part of that project. The exhibition that I curated, a commission by Hank Willis Thomas “Black Survival Guide, or How to Live Through a Police Riot,” was about the history in Wilmington in 1968 and the city’s occupation by the National Guard following the murder of Dr. King.

The Neuberger Museum is currently doing a collaboration with For Freedoms, an artist-led collective co-founded by Hank Willis Thomas. Did you do any work with For Freedoms at the Delaware Art Museum?
We planned the commission in the wake of the 2016 election, and For Freedoms was doing a lot of Town Halls looking at the four freedoms. We said we love that idea and it’s incredibly important but what we were hearing from our community in Delaware is that a big issue at the time was the school to prison pipeline. There was legislation that had to be changed at the school level. So, we said to For Freedoms and Hank, rather than looking at the four freedoms, can you look at something that is incredibly important to Delaware? He hosted a Town Hall, not at the museum, but at a community center. We worked with various community members, which was another key part of my work, to be connected with the communities that we serve. And that was back in 2018 when we had the show on view.

How has the pandemic impacted your line of work?
It’s amplified so many of the structural inequalities and biases that have been exposed during the pandemic. We’ve addressed the work we can do to support those artists and structures and really think about and listen to what our community needs right now. If it means artists, then that means supporting them with honoraria through various social media programs and things like virtual studio visits. We can pay them for their time, and we can get their work out to the world.

How did you transition from master’s student to working at the Delaware Art Museum?
I finished in 2008. So, you know in the economic downturn. Which is one of the reasons that I did a year as a public ally in the AmeriCorps program and I was placed at the Delaware Humanities Forum, which is the state arm of the National Endowment for the Humanities. That was an important part. But then I just found as many independent curatorial projects as I could. I think doing that work with the curatorial fellowship at the Neuberger prepared me for organizing exhibitions on my own, and sending out exhibition proposals. I started doing some independent curatorial work here in Wilmington. Taking advantage of as many opportunities as I could I think helped transition into this position.

As someone looking to work in arts industry, it is inspiring to see that working at campus arts institutions like the Neuberger equips students with real life skills applicable to a variety of jobs in the field. Stay tuned for more Alumni Spotlight conversations with Purchase students who interned at the Neuberger Museum of Art!

Gabrielle Bohrman
Neuberger Museum of Art
Fall 2020 Communications Intern
NEU Student Voices Blogger