Title:On View

Last December, Hyperallergic, one of the most influential magazines covering art and museums, ranked an exhibition at Georgetown’s Maria & Alberto de la Cruz Art Gallery in its “Best of 2019: Our Top 20 United States Art Shows.”

The list included such renowned museums and galleries as Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (better known as Mass MOCA), the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Art Institute of Chicago, university galleries at Northwestern and the University of Chicago, and even the Smithsonian.

Not bad for a gallery that had been open for only a year.

‘Part of a larger conversation’

The exhibition that won a spot on the Top 20 list featured works by internationally acclaimed artist Glenn Ligon. To be a Negro in this country is really never to be looked at was a mini-survey of the artist’s work from the 1990s to today. It included five never-before-seen paintings by Ligon depicting the 1995 Million Man March on the National Mall, which were hung on top of Andy Warhol’s rarely seen Washington Monument wallpaper. The artist personally wrote the accompanying labels.

Curated by GU Art Galleries’ founding director/chief curator Al Miner, the exhibition was another expression of Georgetown’s commitment to social justice and connecting with Washington. Miner says that, unlike galleries at other universities that often function as separate entities, the Maria & Alberto de la Cruz Art Gallery “was conceived to be integrated into the learning and community experiences of our students above everything else.”

Given the gallery’s focus on students, it is fortuitously located at the street level of the Walsh Building, on the corner of 36th and Prospect—directly across from the Tombs and Wisey’s, two cornerstones of the Georgetown student experience.

Because the gallery focuses on exhibiting art—rather than collecting art—it can be more timely and relevant and increase its impact with shows that respond to the community’s needs and to the state of the world at any given moment.

“It’s really about tying content to teaching and to issues that are important to the Georgetown community,” Miner says.

As he plans the calendar, Miner searches out faculty who might be interested in an upcoming exhibition’s theme as it relates to their course content. Glenn Ligon, whose work won high praise on the Hyperallergic best-of list, is an African American artist whose work is frequently inspired by writers, so the English and African American Studies departments’ faculty brought classes to see the exhibition. A diverse range of departments across campus worked with gallery staff to present public programs, such as lectures and films.

“The gallery isn’t siloed in the art department—it’s part of a larger conversation among departments,” says Jennifer Wright (C’96), founding chair of the galleries’ Director’s Council and an early advocate for creating the de la Cruz gallery. “It’s vital for a Georgetown education.”

Finding continuity

The fall 2019 exhibition, Design Transfigured/Waste Reimagined, made a direct connection with student and faculty interest in climate change, sustainability, and the environment. The works were by 30 artists and designers, from 11 countries, who reclaim and transform waste—end-of-use textiles and plastic, human hair, unused agricultural plant material, even highly cleaned, used toilet paper—to create functional and decorative furniture and other home products, art objects, jewelry, and clothing.

The exhibition related to courses beyond the obvious Art and Museum Studies majors, and beyond the sciences, policy, and ethics. English department professor Nathan Hensley brought undergraduate and graduate classes in 19th-century British literature for a seminar within the Design Transfigured/Waste Reimagined exhibition space to frame a discussion about how Victorian writers and readers were thinking about nature and society. The class focused on Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders, which draws themes from the natural world.

There’s continuity between the novel, published 130 years ago, and the exhibition, Hensley says.

Nineteenth-century England was home to the first wide-scale use of fossil fuels and extraction economies. “Those technologies have their impact on today’s climate breakdown,” he says. “The novel and the exhibition ask questions about the dispos- ability of both humans and nature. Today’s castaway culture, along with many of the tools we might use to fight against it, were really invented in the 19th century. 

“Questions like ‘How do we connect human disposability with actual people?’ arise when spaces like this gallery exist,” he adds.

A canvas for art and artists

Georgetown’s gallery culture emerged relatively recently. The Lucille M. & Richard F.X. Spagnuolo Art Gallery—also located in the Walsh building—opened in 2003. It was renovated and upgraded in tandem with the construction of the Maria & Alberto de la Cruz Art Gallery, which opened in 2018. Today it hosts a vibrant series of exhibitions by established professional artists.

The drive to create a new gallery was spearheaded by the College Board of Advisors in the 2010s under the leadership of then- dean Chester Gillis. “A gallery was a need—in the curriculum and in the community,” says Jennifer Wright, who also is a College Board of Advisors member. “It’s a resource for the larger Georgetown and D.C. community as a whole, and that’s critical for its success and longevity,” she adds.

“The space is a canvas for the art, for the artists.”

The gallery was made possible by alumni and parent donors, with the lead gift coming from Maria (C’87) and Alberto (B’89) de la Cruz.

Alberto de la Cruz says that he and Maria heartily support the gallery’s not being a permanent collection but dedicated to exhibitions.

“The space is basically a canvas for the art, for the artists,” he says.

 

De la Cruz says that the quality of the exhibitions has been very high. “Each show brings something different to the space.” He notes that the exhibitions, citing the Glenn Ligon and the recent Design Transfigured/Waste Reimagined installation, are valuable teaching tools. It’s not just a space for art but also for learning.”

Behind the scenes

The Maria & Alberto de la Cruz Art Gallery plays a fundamental role in the graduate museum studies program in which Al Miner is associate professor of the practice, teaching curatorial studies. Before Georgetown, Miner had a 15-year museum background, including the Hirshhorn Museum, which is part of the Smithsonian, and a seven-year stint as Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. At Georgetown, he’s teaching students best practices to set them up for museum careers.

Inji Kim, who will earn her master’s degree from the museum studies program in August 2020, was an intern for the galleries in fall 2019. She is now in an M.A. program in contemporary Asian art at the Sotheby’s Institute in London.

“The gallery has been fascinating. It puts the classroom work into perspective,” she says, noting that what’s taught in class is not always what happens in practice. She’s learning the reality of limited resources and time.

Her internship gave Kim practical experience in almost all of the professional aspects of mounting an exhibition: executing loan agreements, making condition reports of objects upon arrival, managing social-media promotion, and giving tours.

Her favorite part is working with classes and watching the art provide different ways for students to see classroom content. “That’s what a college gallery can do.”

As it moves into its second full year, the gallery is working with neighborhood associations to expand awareness and with Holy Trinity School down the street for tours and programming.

The gallery also surveyed Georgetown students last fall about what they’d like to see. The number-one theme students responded to involved global and political issues. “Beauty” was the second-most popular potential exhibition theme selected by students. “I think that tells us how all students can find a kind of solace in this space,” Miner says.

National research shows that younger generations are not looking to walk into an art space, sit on a bench, and look at things. They’re looking for memorable and interactive experiences. Maybe what draws them in the door is something that feels like a change of pace, or a change in landscape around them, but as Miner points out, “an exhibition still has to challenge them intellectually in a way that Georgetown students constantly crave.”

Art at your doorstep

When the gallery opened two years ago, a lot of students didn’t know what the long-empty space in Walsh was; they were too busy rushing to class or the dorm behind Walsh or cutting through the building to pick up a coffee and bagel.

Exhibitions attract Georgetown students, faculty, staff, and art enthusiasts throughout Washington.

Now students are getting drawn into the space.

“Having art on campus, walking distance to your dorm or where you get your lunch every day, makes art part of your life,” Miner says. “You don’t have travel to the Mall; it’s right at your doorstep.”

The spring show, which opened in January, features works by American artist Chemi Rosado-Seijo, who lives in his native Puerto Rico; he was on site to give opening tours of his work, which includes sculpture, video, and paintings. The works in the exhibition, drawn from his 20-year career, were inspired by the physical and social landscape in and around San Juan.

An avid skateboarder, Rosado-Seijo connects with skating communities around the world, including Washington, D.C. The exhibition included a video of the city’s skateboard enthusiasts. The works on view were created in Washington, including some on the Georgetown campus.

As the staff looks forward, they want the gallery to not just be a place that students visit and faculty use in their teaching, but also part of the culture of Georgetown, part of the Georgetown experience.

“We might not be able to compete with Wisey’s or The Tombs for being part of what alumni talk about when they remember their time here,” Miner says with a nod to the student landmarks across the street. “But we want this gallery to be something that’s a unique part of the campus experience for lots of different types of students, and that they remember it fondly.”