Distinguished Alumni: Jan Howard

Before I finished my MA, I was offered the very unusual opportunity to become Acting Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Spencer Museum of Art, having worked as an assistant to Elizabeth Broun in the department throughout my graduate studies. My museum experience at KU put me at an advantage when I applied for an NEA-sponsored internship at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and shortly thereafter an assistant curator position at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

What I most appreciated was that my classwork wonderfully complemented the work I was doing in the museum. I took a Murphy seminar on the history of the woodcut from Richard Field, courses on Dutch prints of daily life and Rembrandt from Linda-Stone-Ferrier, classes in the history of photography from Tom Southall, a Murphy seminar on medieval manuscripts, and many courses on modern art. The catalogue entries we wrote for the Dutch Prints of Daily Life catalogue under Dr. Stone-Ferrier’s guidance were my model for exhibition writing for many years afterward.

Keep challenging yourself and explore every opportunity that intrigues you, even if you think you don’t have the resources. Ask for help finding those resources. I think students today are much better at that than I was.

I’m not sure how different this might be from life as a graduate student, but most museum curators I know work many hours outside of the nine-to-five workday. Evenings and weekends can be devoted to public programs, board or committee meetings, visiting exhibitions, donor development, travel, catching up with deadlines, and research and writing. For the most part, these are all things that that you’re incredibly invested in so it’s very stimulating. I see young curators forging a better work/life balance and it is something you have to learn to do.

When I worked at the Baltimore Museum of Art, we had been consciously building a collection and exhibition and program schedule that engaged our predominantly Black community. That commitment to engaging our community was something that I took with me when I began working at the RISD Museum. Our focus on local audiences has only intensified over the last five years or so at the RISD Museum. With the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement, we have been actively pursuing anti-racist work in all areas of the museum. Our progress, or lack thereof, is posted on the RISD Museum website and is updated regularly.

Another major shift has been in the length of exhibitions. Early in my career an exhibition might be up for only two months so there was a constant need, with several galleries to fill, to create and borrow shows. I much prefer the pace of today’s exhibitions which can be up for six months or longer, if they are not traveling shows. It hasn’t lessened the amount of work, but given us more opportunities for interpretation and programs, so more time to think about the themes of the project from a variety of perspectives.

It has been the deaccessioning and eventual return of a Benin bronze head of an oba stolen during the 1897 massacre of Benin City in current Nigeria. I began working on this about five years ago with our curator of ancient art, Gina Borromeo, who had taken on the responsibility of making this sculpture accessible for study. The RISD Museum has a very small collection of African art, so we don’t have a curator for this material. As chief curator at the time, I initiated conversations with Africa art curators in this country and abroad to understand the work they were doing toward repatriation. It may have been helpful that Gina and I were not fully aware of the challenges of returning the work as we forged ahead. Your readers have probably been following stories in the press on this topic and we feel this unrelenting visibility of the issue has aided in the start of the repatriation of the Benin bronzes. I’m optimistic we will be able to return the head of an oba at RISD in the near future.

One’s most recent exhibition and publication are always at top of mind so it is Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities, which was shown over the past year at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, the RISD Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. I have had the great privilege of working closely with several artists on major shows and books and those are highlights of my professional life. Shahzia had been a bit under the radar over the past decade and so it was extremely satisfying to see the response to the show and renewed interest in her work.

I have spent most of my energy in Baltimore and Providence building the collections through gifts and purchases. A lot of time was spent with donors to broaden what could be accomplished with limited funds for purchase. You have the most control over shaping the collection making purchases with endowed funds, but you can also encourage donors to acquire works as gifts or eventual gifts based on your collecting priorities. I hope that I have built collections that are useful for current and future generations. It’s very satisfying to look into our print classrooms and see that a professor’s selection for that day’s class includes a majority of recent acquisitions.