SPOTLIGHT

Since freshman year I have been involved with the Student Friends of the HUAM, which plans the curatorial tours of the exhibits on display at the Fogg, Sackler and Busch-Reisinger Museums. This year I'm hoping to re-structure the group so as to offer more events, both social and academic, for our membership. Our main aim is to bring as many Harvard undergraduates into Harvard's Art Museums as we can.

I have also been fortunate enough to find the Sackler Saturdays museum education program, managed by the Coordinator of Public Education at the Art Museums. The program’s goal is to draw children ages 6 to 11 and their parents into the Sackler Museum for games, art-making activities, gallery hunts, storytelling and other activites which will enhance their experience.

What inspires you, as a busy college student, to continue to participate in organizations that require such a significant commitment?

I hope to one day work in an art museum, either as a curator or an administrator. Here at Harvard I have the opportunity to explore my interests and long-term plans right now—and I feel that I should take advantage of them. My classes are very important to me, but it is the experiences I get during the year at the art museums and over the summer at various arts-related jobs keeps me content with my academic studies, my extracurricular life and even my social life insofar as those I meet through museum work, more often than not, become some of my best friends.

What has been your most rewarding experience, artistic or otherwise, while at Harvard?

It's too difficult to say that just one experience stands above all others since I've been at Harvard, but one that is particularly memorable is the Student Friends of the Harvard University Art Museums “Evening with the Director” gala last spring. The event was a culmination of weeks of hard work by our entire committee, and it went off without a hitch. At the event, there were a good number of my friends whom I could relax with and enjoy the ambience of the Fogg courtyard. Also at the museum that night were many other students, looking at the works of art in the galleries, meeting the director of the art museums and going on the tour that was offered. It felt great to have been a part of the team that organized the event and succeeded in bringing students to the Fogg Museum. The museum, more than usual, really felt like a second home that night. My academic, extracurricular, and social lives all coincided at this one event—and I was ecstatic.

Do you have any amusing stories that happened in the museums over the years?

This past August I worked at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy. While there, one day I was guarding the main entrance gallery, watching for visitors who were getting too close to the works of art or that had passed by the ticket office without leaving their oversized bags and bottles of water. There was one man, rather old and cantankerous, who turned his back to me when I politely said, "Sir, you must check your water bottle back at the lockers."  When I more firmly asked him again, he turned back to face me, full water bottle in hand with its cap unscrewed, and said "Well, what if I do this this?!"  He then proceeded to dump 24 ounces of water all over the gallery floor, just missing the Alexander Calder mobile hanging from the ceiling.I don't get angry easily, but I was ready to throw this guy into the Grand Canal just on the other side of the Guggenheim Museum.  I told him to get out, but he would not comply.  By the time I got the security guard, he had fled the scene. Talk about an nerve-racking experience.

Characterize yourself or your tastes in art in five words.

Florence, Venice, Siena, Ravenna, Milan. Where do you imagine yourself next year and in ten years?

I imagine myself working in a curatorial department in an art museum for a couple of years before pursuing graduate studies in Italian Renaissance painting and sculpture.  In ten years, I would like to have completed a PhD in art history and would hopefully be on my way to becoming a curator of Western art at a major museum in the United States.