The New Curator in Town
It’s building time for the Austin Museum of Art — but for once that has nothing to do with architectural plans or a facility. This time, AMOA is building its staff, and it has just made one of those additions that stands to have a significant impact on the museum’s future. Last week, AMOA hired Dana Friis-Hansen to be chief curator. A specialist in contemporary art, Friis-Hansen comes to Austin by way of Houston, where he’s been senior curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum since 1995. With additional stints at the List Visual Arts Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Nanjo and Associates, an international arts advisory service in Tokyo, Japan, Friis-Hansen brings a sense of both the regional and the global to a position that gives him not only responsibility for AMOA’s exhibitions and educational programs, but a large role in developing the museum’s small but growing permanent collection. (“Shaping a collection: That’s definitely a priority,” Friis-Hansen says.)
The curator is effusive about his new position, about AMOA, and about his new home. “Any time you start a new job, you look forward to the possibilities,” he notes. “And this is an especially good time for the institution. Austin nationally and internationally is recognized more and more for its future rather than its past. I can bring experience not only in New York but outside the country to help Austin get on the circuit for major exhibitions.”
And once he gets them, he’ll be able to show them off in that new facility in AMOA’s future. Talk of that facility elicits more enthusiasm from Friis-Hansen and praise for AMOA’s choice of architect. “What’s great about [Richard] Gluckman is that he makes neutral and flexible spaces that let the art speak on their own rather than scream out, ‘The architect was here!’ I mean, you don’t want the architect’s fingerprints all over the gallery space. You want his fingerprints on the outside of the building, so that it’s exciting to look at, exciting to walk into, exciting to move around in, to be in. But when I organize a show, I want the viewer to be able to walk into the gallery and have the walls disappear.” Friis-Hansen is currently out of the country; he starts work in earnest October 4.
Long Center Finalists Talk
Speaking of buildings, here’s a reminder that the three finalists in the ARTS Center Stage search for an architectural firm to turn Palmer Auditorium into the Long Center for the Performing Arts will be in town giving public lectures this week. Each of the three firms will make a 90-minute presentation about its work in Jessen Auditorium. The schedule is: Barton Myers Associates, Thursday, September 9; Polshek Partnership Architects, Monday, September 13; and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Wednesday, September 15. All presentations start at 6pm, and all are free.
Further Clarification
Well, in my attempt to clarify matters at the State Theater, first reported in this column two weeks ago, I mucked things up again. Guy Roberts is not, as I stated then, in negotiation with the State Theater Company board to fill the job of associate artistic director. He is in negotiations with producing artistic director Don Toner. My apologies to Roberts, Toner, and everybody at the State. As penance, I won’t make any State Theater jokes when hosting the B. Iden Payne Awards there Monday night.
This article appears in September 10 • 1999.