12 CONNECTING PEOPLE TO ART: VOICES, VIEWPOINTS AND VISION department is how the different voices—and points of view, training, art historical focus, personal and profes- sional experiences—make the product so much richer. It’s impossible to learn something new in a vacuum, and the members of the curatorial team all bring something specific to the table. EC: I agree that collaboration makes everything we do stronger and allows us to be ambitious because there’s so much more we can do because of it. I have so much admiration and respect for my colleagues’ expertise and experience! Our conversations are open and direct—communication is critical to the success of any collaboration—and that allows us to be clear to ourselves and to one another about why we are doing what we’re doing, and why it matters. HKdV: Working with a larger curatorial crew allows for further collaboration in ways we were not able to do before. Also, we have been integrating the works on paper collection throughout the galleries, which is very exciting and has offered many new perspectives on old favorites in the permanent collection. YW: Now the definitions of curatorial positions at SCMA intrinsically require that we work collaboratively across time and culture. For example, a 21st-century ceramic sculpture made by a Japanese artist—and we have a very good collection of these—is inherently Asian art, contemporary art and sculpture all at once, and thus falls within the purviews of Emma, Danielle and me! I particularly enjoy collaboration with my colleagues, not only because they are amicable people and brilliant minds, but more importantly because we all uphold and practice the philosophy that today it’s least productive to think in boxes and consider people— artists, collectors, patrons, dealers, etc.—and works of art in their confined immediate environments. Only through sharing our respective expertise can we make it transparent to our visitors that we have always lived in an interconnected world. What’s notable about this point in time for the museum? For the art world more generally? EC: We speak more of art worlds, I think, rather than a single art world! HKdV: As we’ve been talking about, it seems that the boundaries of time, culture and materials are somewhat disappearing in our curatorial work. We are also dealing with a new political awareness among students that encourages them to investigate the past and be critical observers. Maybe in a time when fact and fiction are hard to distinguish, it will become evident that true research skills are essential and that we can learn a lot from the past. Since we live in a predominantly visual world right now, it is also essential that one has good visual literacy. DC: A larger curatorial department brings significant change to how the museum collects and displays art, and we are able to really think about the direction in which we would like to take our collections. It’s a rare opportunity and I find it very exciting to be a part of it. At the same time, the art community, but also the world at large, is finally acknowledging some of our deep-rooted prejudices and marginalized peoples in a very direct way. We still have a long way to go but at least in museums, we have a platform to respond to issues that are currently being discussed. Particularly at a women’s college, some of the movements that have women’s issues at their core are of great importance. Displaying works of art by women artists and highlight- ing the role women play in the art world as donors, dealers, curators and creators is one way that SCMA can set an example for other institutions. EC: I agree with that. U.S. museums more generally are increasingly undertaking the work of addressing their own colonial histories and the kinds of oppression and exclusion that they create and maintain, whether wittingly or unwittingly. Of course, this is not a new critique. Artists, art historians, philosophers and others from around the world have assiduously called attention to these histories, oppressions and exclusions for a very, very long time. But the reinvigoration of these debates, and the fact that they’re more front and center at institutions that have been slow to change, make me hopeful that a substantive shift is underway.