Local Exhibit to Highlight the Important Role of Today's Art Curators

Paducah, KY (08/17/2017) — They are often the unsung heroes of the art world, spending countless days and hours organizing information, gathering research, negotiating with artists, applying for grants, executing exhibits and juggling budgets while also trying to create their own work to share with the world. They exist between the duality of producer and creator. It is the latter that will be celebrated with the first fine art exhibition of the season at West Kentucky Community and Technical College titled, A Curated Life: Mediations Between Art, Objects and Ideas.

A reception for the show will be held Friday, September 15 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Clemens Fine Art Gallery located on the WKCTC campus. A panel discussion will also take place during the reception where several of the exhibiting artists will discuss what it means to be a modern curator and the impact they have on how the public perceives contemporary and historical art work. The public is encouraged to ask questions of the panel during this discussion. The exhibit runs through October 13.

Curators/artists participating in the exhibit are T. Michael Martin from Murray State University, Stacey Reason from the Yeiser Art Center, Debi Henry Donaldson from the Murray Art Guild, Landee Bryant Greene from Maiden Alley Cinema, Grace Eckert from University of Tennessee-Martin, Alison Erazmus from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Katie Waters from University of Southern Indiana, Kristina Arnold from Western Kentucky University and Katie Boatman from Belmont University.

Art curators have an eye for staging artwork in a way that creates interest in an exhibition. "To be a curator today requires multi-tasking while being responsible for a collection of art, selecting art to be displayed, organizing art exhibitions in galleries as well as unconventional or public spaces, researching artists, plus being highly organized, knowledgeable, a proficient writer and passionate about art and the art they exhibit," said Todd Birdsong, Clemens Fine Arts Center Technical Director.

As much as art consumes their lives, they also manage to fabricate, fashion and forge personal work, Birdsong said.

"The contemporary curator is no longer a mere caretaker or overseer of art. They are artist in their own right creating narratives, communicating relationships and translating ideas for the rest of us to experience," he said. "They provoke, question and realize ideas as artists while existing in a limbo-like state between art and curation - a difficult place to be considering that without the curator, there could be no exhibition."

For more information about the exhibit or about the Clemens Fine Arts Gallery contact Birdsong at (270) 534-3220.

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West Kentucky Community and Technical College (WKCTC) has been recognized as an Aspen Prize Top 10 Community College each of the four times the Prize has been awarded by the Aspen Institute and has twice been named a Finalist with Distinction for providing students with strong job training and continuing higher education opportunity, for achieving high completion and transfer rates, and for providing strong employment results for its graduates.

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