Curator Kaytie Johnson addresses the role of the curator in museums and the differences between public and academic museums, including audience, collections, finding new artists, and pushing the envelope with research-based and conceptual exhibitions.
“My interest as a curator goes far beyond visual art. That’s why I thought it was great working in a liberal arts college, because I got to collaborate with faculty members from all across the disciplines. A lot of the programming I did related a lot to a wide range of disciplines and teaching.”
Since 2011, Kaytie Johnson has been the Rochelle F. Levy Director and Chief Curator of The Galleries at Moore College of Art & Design in Philadephia, PA. Over the past fourteen years, she has curated more than fifty exhibitions, presented and published numerous articles and lectures, and served on many panels and juries. Johnson completed a master’s degree in art history at Arizona State University in Phoenix, where she focused on historical and modern Mexican art, before becoming a curatorial assistant at the Phoenix Art Museum for four years. Subsequently, she was Director and Curator of the university galleries, museum, and collections at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN, for nine years, where she also founded the DePauw Biennial featuring contemporary art in the Midwest.