Strange Fire

Q&A: Mary statzer

By Jess T. Dugan   |   May 7, 2020 

Mary Statzer is the Curator of Prints and Photographs at UNM Art Museum. She holds an MFA in printmaking and PhD in art history with specialties in the history of photography and museum studies. Mary has published articles in Aperture magazine and edited a multi-author book titled, The Photographic Object 1970, released in 2016. She organized the exhibitions Patrick Nagatani: A Survey of Early Photographs, Please Enjoy and Return: Bruce Conner Films from the Sixties, and Indelible Ink: Native Women, Printmaking, Collaboration at UNMAM. 

Jess T. Dugan: Hello Mary! Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. You are the Curator of Prints and Photographs at the University of New Mexico Art Museum- but before I get to your current work, I want to ask you about your beginnings. What initially drew you to the world of art, and what was your path to getting to where you are today?

Mary Statzer: Hi, Jess! It’s an honor for me to be interviewed by you for Strange Fire Collective. I am a huge admirer of what SFC represents and puts out into the world.

The short answer to your question is that I found my way to the art world through the world of education. I grew up in a small farming community and, despite the odds, my high school had a great art program. And I also attended an amazing two-week art camp at Illinois State University which inspired the imagination of myself as an artist.

Then, I received a BFA in Printmaking from ISU. While a student there, the faculty encouraged me to visit Chicago to see museums, galleries, and art fairs. I worked at University Galleries with Barry Blinderman, who came from directing Semaphore Gallery where he showed artists like Tseng Kwong Chi and Keith Haring. At ISU, Barry presented the work of groundbreaking artists, such as that of David Wojnarowicz. And as an undergraduate, I sat in on Barry’s graduate seminar on contemporary art that blew my mind. Ultimately, these experiences in college changed my world view. They opened my mind to ideas previously unknown.

Later, I received an MFA in Printmaking at Arizona State University. And, much later, I got a PhD in art history from the University of Arizona. I researched the history of photography and museums and made the Center for Creative Photography my home base.

JTD: Prior to moving into the curatorial world, you were an artist and worked as a printmaker. Talk to me about this transition, and also about how these earlier experiences affect your current work as a curator.

MS: After my MFA, I became the collaborating printer and studio manager at Segura Publishing Company, a fine print publisher in Tempe, Arizona. I printed editions for Pattsi Valdez, William Wegman, Mark Klett, Francis Whitehead, Luis Jiménez, Buzz Spector, and others. Working closely with artists to help them realize their ideas in another medium is both a unique opportunity and a pleasure. The intensity of that very specific interaction, facilitating the creative process, and the opportunity to get so close to an artist in a short period of time is something I naturally gravitated toward and grew to deeply value.

I left Segura and founded and directed a group of artist studio spaces in Phoenix that included a small gallery where I curated exhibitions. I also took a position at Lisa Sette Gallery, where I was the preparator and sold art. Admittedly, I was terrible at selling art! But fortunately for me, Lisa had a solid, interesting stable of artists and this kept me involved and interested in the art world. At some point, if you can believe it, I was ready to ditch art altogether and study psychology. But then I landed into the role of curatorial assistant of Modern and Contemporary art and Latin American art at the Phoenix Art Museum. I loved it immediately as it provided a way for me to continue working directly with artists and to facilitate their work and its voice in the world.

My experience as an artist influences my focus on the physicality of art objects, especially photographs. It strengthens my ability to communicate with artists, which also has something to do with my interest in knowing the artist’s intent as a starting point. That’s never where my research ends but I do care and pay close attention to that. And, I hope it shows up as empathy when I talk with artists in their studios or review their portfolios. I want to be an ally, to support artists in the pursuit of making meaningful art.

JTD: How would you articulate the throughline of your curatorial interests? Are there certain qualities in an artist or body of work that you particularly respond to?

MS: I’ve always been interested in concept-driven photographs with strong visual components. I look for artists who articulate their ideas clearly, who push formal strategies to become conceptual strategies. I’m attracted to photographers who critique the past without dismissing it. Humor in art appeals to me no matter what the medium is.

Rather than relying on my long-held interests in the last few years, I’ve invited the influence of my peers and the environment at UNM. My curatorial practice is constantly evolving and yet some patterns are emerging: a focus on social justice issues and diverse voices, exploring the intersection of individual experience and identity with socio-political realms, as well as archive and other research-based practices that yield compassionate, visually compelling projects.

JTD: In 2016, you edited and published a book, The Photographic Object 1970, which focused on Peter C. Bunnell’s 1970 exhibition Photography into Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, one of the first exhibitions of work that blurred the boundaries between photography and other mediums. How did you become interested in this subject? What was your process like working on the book?

MS: While working on my PhD at UA, I researched 1960s and 70s exhibitions that challenged photographic modernism. The fierce critique of John Szarkowski and MoMA by postmodern critics was essential but I believed it important to highlight lesser known internal challenges to the medium coming from photographers and curators like Peter Bunnell and Nathan Lyons.

Photography into Sculpture was one of five case studies, and the last researched, in my dissertation proposal. By the time I got to it, I was tired and confused. But, once I interviewed the living participants of that show, and saw many of the actual objects in the restaging of the show at Cherry and Martin Gallery in Los Angeles, the entire project opened up for me. It became the single focus of my dissertation, which then became my contributions to the edited volume.

Like Bunnell said over and over in the texts he wrote about Photography into Sculpture, photography was never pure. It was never just one thing. It had always been combined with other mediums in interesting and generative ways. My contribution to the field focused on the historical argument, but I quickly learned that contemporary artists had an interest in knowing about that exhibition, making it relevant and useful to the present creative moment, too.

JTD: Talk to me about your interest in interviews and oral histories – as you mentioned, they are a significant part of The Photographic Object – and you also employed them in your current exhibition at the UNM Art Museum, Indelible Ink: Native Women, Printmaking, Collaboration, which I’ll ask you about in a moment. What draws you to conduct interviews, and what power do you think oral history and storytelling holds in both artmaking and art history?

MS: Jess, part of my interest in your project with Vanessa Fabbre, To Survive on This Shore, was the successful combination of oral history and images. I first saw your photographs in To Survive on This Shore without the interviews and had an immediate positive reaction. The photographs are incredibly moving and they are satisfying as stand-alone images. However, there is no question that the interviews took that project to another level for me. Reading those very personal stories in the subjects’ own voice cut to the heart and stirred my compassion. They articulate the full range of real-world challenges and experiences in a way that I can’t imagine conjuring on my own as a white, middle-aged, cisgender woman.

Interviews involve research and preparation but also close listening and exchange. In this latter way they are also collaborative in nature. When interviews are published as text, they require careful transcription and editing so that the results accurately reflect what the subject wants to say, in the way they want to say it, and for meaning to be accurately conveyed. 

Oral history has clear limitations as a methodology of art history. An interview represents just one person’s account of events, experiences and opinions, making bias inevitable. But I do think oral history, in aggregate, is useful in a scholarly context when coupled with archival research. Interviews enliven historical narratives, ground historical moments in lived experience, and make events of the past more authentic and relevant for contemporary readers. 

With regard to the current exhibition, Indelible Ink, the extended label copy was entirely composed of interviews. The introduction is the only text I wrote and “signed” so the distinction would be clear between my voice and that of the artists. By taking this approach, I acknowledge that stories, ideas, and symbols represented in the work – whether personal or cultural – belong to the artists, not me. For example, whatever interpretation of Indigenous trickster figures that I could offer based on what I think they mean or what I’ve been told that they mean, are not as urgent or captivating as Juane Quick-to-See Smith’s or Julie Buffalohead’s, because the concept lives and breathes for them. The interviews honor the artist’s specialized knowledge and culturally specific points of view.

JTD: Tell me more about the exhibition itself. How did you become interested in this particular group of artists, and what are your hopes for the exhibition?

MS: I’ve been really energized by contemporary Native American art since arriving in New Mexico. Matika Wilbur, Cannupa Hanska Lugar, Wendy Red Star, Nicholas Galanin, Jeffrey Gibson, Marie Watt, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Dyani White Hawk, and Rose B. Simpson are some of the artists that have captured my attention and altered my perception of the world. To expand my understanding, I attended Minneapolis Institute of Art’s symposium for the exhibition Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists. I was overwhelmed and deeply inspired by the scope and power of the exhibition as well as by the Native women attending the symposium who were integral to the curatorial process of that exhibition.

Immediately, I began thinking about what I could do at the UNM Art Museum to further that show’s thesis which is that women have and always will be the core of Native art practice. My exhibition highlights printmaking, a medium that’s less studied in general, and rarely written about in terms of Native art production. UNM is also home to Tamarind Institute, a famed print workshop that trains collaborative printers. I’m interested in articulating and expanding definitions of collaboration, and Tamarind is located inside that nexus. And for the Native women artists in the exhibition, the answers to the question about the meaning of collaboration in their practice are quite varied and inclusive across time and space. For some, collaboration is essential and it includes their ancestors, their own children, members of their tribes. For others, collaboration is something that takes place only in the print studio.

JTD: As you know, Strange Fire is committed to championing work by women, people of color, and LGBTQ folks – and also to raising awareness around important social and political issues of our time. As you mentioned, many of your recent exhibitions have been geared towards promoting social justice through the telling of stories from underrepresented communities. What role do you see art playing in the larger pursuit of education and social change? What role do you play as a curator?

MS: I’ll be candid. I spent a long time wanting to be a curator and getting the credentials to be one. It almost came as a shock for me to realize that I had finally stepped into this role where I have some power and agency to make change. I work every day to step into that power, to be clear about the best ways to use it as an effective ally. 

UNM Art Museum has a large and notable collection of photographs that was amassed mostly in the 1960s and 70s by well-known figures in the world of photography, including Van Deren Coke and Beaumont Newhall. There are wonderful artworks in the collection, but there is also a severe lack of work that represents the diversity of UNM’s students, faculty, and staff. This demographic is the museum’s core constituency. We just have to do better to meet their needs as well as reflect their interests and concerns. It’s a personal ethic, which echoes the ethic of my institution, to be more inclusive and equitable in how, what, and from whom we collect, moving forward. Towards that end, we created the Acquisition Fund for Diversity and Equity and made our first purchase in 2019. I’m also committed to representing different points of view in the interpretation of the holdings in the current collection. I welcome collaborative partners to accomplish all of this in a responsible and nuanced way. 

JTD: What projects are you currently working on, and what’s coming next for you?

MS: While the museum is closed due to COVID-19, I’m focusing on online content with my museum colleagues. Various curatorial projects are also in development. I am re-envisioning UNMAM’s permanent collection galleries and I’m working on two solo exhibitions. One is with the Pakistani-American sculptor Anila Quayyum Agha, whose ornate light installations based on patterns found in Islamic architecture result in contemplative spaces that welcome everyone –regardless of gender, for example. The other is with Rose B. Simpson, an artist living and working on the Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico. Rose is a triple threat – a visual artist, performance artist, and poet. She engages fashion, music, custom cars, and portraiture. Her work is tough and emotional, combatting objectification and stereotyping, commenting on the untenable way we currently inhabit the earth. That show is in the very early stages. I can’t wait to see how it develops and share Rose’s vision with our audiences.

JTD: Excellent, thank you so much Mary!