Interview with Emily Mello, Director of Education at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University

July 25, 2008

Emily Mello, Director of Education at the Rose Art Museum recently took some time to answer a few questions from the New Vilna Review by email. In this interview she talks about the history of the museum, as well as upcoming exhibitions.

NVR: Can you tell us a little about your own background in education and the museum world?

I studied art history at Mount Holyoke College and knew that I wanted to pursue a career in arts that involved engaging diverse audiences. I was particularly interested in the way that the art of our time engaged directly with the issues and ideas of our time and felt that access to this work should be shared by all. After interning at the RISD Museum of Art I got my Masters in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I was attracted to pedagogical approaches that privileged process over product and I think that mirrors much of the art and readings of art that I am also drawn to. From Harvard, I went on to be a Curator of Education at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati Ohio for over 4 years. There I managed and directed our tour, school and community programs as well as developing public programming that included music, film, and performance. I came back to New England to work at the Rose as Director of Education in January.

NVR: How does the museum connect/interact with the broader Brandeis University community?

The museum offers a range of programming to the public, which includes both on and off campus audiences. Faculty members from many different departments, such as Philosophy, Anthropology, Education, and Art History, co-sponser symposia with interdisciplinary takes on Rose exhibitions. We serve students through internships as well as events organized by the Student Committee for the Rose Art Museum (SCRAM). Additionally, classes visit for tailored tours of exhibitions and the collection that are based on their studies. We are also working to increase programming to include more film, performance art, and music in addition to bringing artists to campus for both public lectures and gallery talks.

Brandeis is known for a commitment to social change and that is reflected in the students and their interests. As an educator, I found this extremely appealing when I arrived at Brandeis. By collaborating with initiatives on campus, I am able to guide students who employ the Rose to provide experiences for the community. For example Brandeis students who mentor middle school and high school youth in the community have designed and implemented interactive tours of exhibitions and we have a class that has been taught for many years through the education program in which students teach Waltham elementary school children in the museum.

NVR: One of the exhibits currently on display is “The New Authentics,” which looks at various visions of Jewish life and culture among artists who in one way or another see their art as being “post-Jewish,” how did the exhibit come to the Rose and how would you describe it for those who haven’t seen it yet?

The exhibition was organized by the Spertus Museum, a Jewish museum in Chicago. Although the Rose is not a Jewish museum, this exhibition explores ideas that are relevant to contemporary art such as how biography, legacy, and identity are approached by artists, curators and culture at large.  Approaches to identity have been explored by many modern and contemporary art museums including the Rose, though this exhibition takes on significant relevance at the Rose which is on Brandeis’s campus. I think it is interesting to note that Brandeis was founded at a time when Jews were being denied acceptance to universities based on their identity and the reason for its founding was to offer an excellent education to anyone regardless of religion, ethnicity, gender, race or other aspects of identity. The artists in the New Authentics and the students who are now at Brandeis have not, to my knowledge, experienced this specific kind of discrimination in North America. They are of a generation that grapples with other identity-based issues. Brandeis continues to hold to its founding core principals, but in remaining a non-sectarian university committed to issues of importance to American Jewry, but I find that those ideas are multiple, diverse, ever-changing, and forward thinking while reflecting on and respecting the past. These are the ways that the artists in the New Authentics: Artists of a Post-Jewish Generation consider identity.

The exhibition consists of sculpture, painting, photography, video and installation by artists based in North America who were born in the 60s and 70s. Many of the artists grapple with questions such as how to make work about the past and how to identify with the past, often relating specifically the Holocaust, from their comparatively privileged position. For example, Cheselyn Amato’s piece, a digital print on vinyl, that she made by scanning a collage of materials that includes an image of an aerial view of a concentration camp obscured by the decorative patterns of napkins and placements. This piece asks, where is this history in the present, is it persisting through mundane domestic life in the present, is it repressed, or somewhere in between? Other artists deal with hybridity, such as Laura Kina who came to her Jewish identity through conversion. Her paintings of refrigerator doors not only reference the color field painting of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko through her handling of their geometry and reflective surfaces (perhaps an artistic legacy), but also through their inclusion of photographs and portraiture they act as stand ins of her ethnically and socio-economically diverse family.  Other artists explore traditions, rituals, spirituality, and sexuality amongst other topics through a lens of self-definition.

NVR: In addition to visiting exhibitions, the museum also has an impressive collection of its own, what would you consider the strengths of the collection to be, and how often are items from this collection on display in the museum?

There is always at least one exhibition that is largely made up of works from the collection on view. The Rose collection has strengths in geometric and abstract expressionism as well as photo-realism and pop art.  The Rose’s founding in 1968 is reflected in many of the works having been collected not long after they were made. In the early years major works by Warhol, de Kooning, Rauschenberg amongst countless other familiar names were collected.  Additionally the work of emerging and well-known artists working today continues to be collected.

NVR: What kinds of educational programs take place at the Rose Art Museum?

In addition to the campus and community outreach I mentioned before, we offer “Inside View” curator led tours of the exhibitions, artist talks, a jazz series, and for a minimal fee, adult and school groups can schedule a docent (trained guide) to tour the exhibitions with them. We also offer printed didactic gallery materials and catalogues. We are looking forward to a website redesign that will include video and podcasts to provide further insight into the mind of artists and the Rose’s first rate collection, which we hope to change from being one of New England’s best kept secrets to something that more people are aware of and can learn from.

NVR: Can you tell us about some of the programs in the works for this coming fall?

On the evening of September 25 three new exhibitions will open. They include Drawing on Film, an exhibition organized by the Drawing Center in New York of work that spans several decades of artists who have scratched, manipulated and drawn directly on the surface of film itself. In October we will have a live performance of sound and image with artist Amy Granat who will project her scratch films and amplify the sounds of her marks that will be further manipulated by an experimental composer, Stefan Tcherepnin. We will also have a rare screening of Stan Brakhage’s hand painted 16 mm films. An exhibition that will be pulled from the collection is called the Invisible Rays: The Surrealist Effect. This show will include work that spans from early to mid 20th century surrealists such as, Dali and Tanguey, as well as contemporary work that reflects the influence of surrealism. The third exhibition showcases the Rose’s recent acquisitions and is titled Project for a New American Century which is named after an 80-foot long work on paper by artist Dominic McGill.

NVR: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Well, I was wondering what you think about my idea for an ad campaign with the slogan: “Really, we’re not that far away?” All kidding aside, we have an enthusiastic audience who know about the Rose and who come from Boston via the commuter rail or driving, but I think we could expand that audience if people realized that getting here is easy and that our programs and exhibitions are well worth the trip!