A Day In the Life of a Curator
May 4, 2015
Ever wonder about the extraordinary art you see throughout campus, including the halls of UA? UA’s very own Natalie Lawler and Eric Leffler are Chapman’s art curators and manage, catalog, install, and maintain the University’s fine art. Read on to find out more about what their exciting jobs entail — no two days are the same in the world of a Chapman University art curator!
What does a curator do?
Natalie
: In the context of our job (at Chapman), a curator helps create art exhibitions on campus or off, researches and writes about the artwork, and helps raise awareness of it around the campus community. We also maintain a catalog of artwork and exhibitions, and in many cases, install the exhibits ourselves.
Natalie Lawler, assistant collections registrar and preparator, installing
World War I exhibit
currently open in Argyros Forum.
What have you worked on recently as a curator?
Natalie
: Currently on display in Argyros Forum (up through mid-June) is an
exhibition of World War I
artifacts and images (
see photo, left
). My three student workers, along with a group from the History Department, curated the content and installed the exhibition during Interterm. They also teamed up with several graphic design students to design the layout and graphic text, so this was an all-around collaborative experience and one that I’m so proud to have helped guide.
Eric
: Most recently, we have been working on putting together an exhibition to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the
Escalette Collection of Art
. We are hoping to have it up in July in the
Guggenheim Gallery
on campus, and it will feature some of our favorite pieces from our amazing collection.
What’s the most interesting or your favorite part of the job?
Natalie
: Every single day keeps me on my feet. I rarely do the same thing twice, and I get to work with so many different people around campus (sometimes even climbing on and around their desks). One thing I particularly love is teaching student workers how to use a drill — they often don’t expect that as part of the job. I also love giving tours to people who don’t necessarily love abstract art. It’s challenging, but teaching people new ways of seeing and thinking about color can be such a rewarding breakthrough. Most days I walk away from my job with a completely new set of tasks than what I walked in with. It keeps me intrigued.
Eric
: My favorite part of the job is probably when we are actually installing exhibitions. It’s one of the more physical aspects of the job and involves handling the artwork, climbing ladders and such, but it’s really satisfying when you hang up all those paintings and prints and catch those first glimpses of what you spent all those months planning.
What’s your alma mater?
Natalie
: I graduated from Cal State Long Beach, where I studied fine art drawing and painting. I graduated in 2009.
Eric Leffler, collections assistant, in his painting studio.
Eric
: I graduated with a BFA in painting from Indiana University in 2010, and then I moved to Spain, where I lived for three years. In 2013, I got my MFA in contemporary art at University of Vigo, in Pontevedra, Spain.
What initially drew you to art and what drives your passion for art today?
Natalie
: I honestly think I just never wanted to stop playing with crayons and paper. I don’t think I ever thought twice about it — the more I learned about art, the more questions I had, and the more fun it became to try and attack the ever-growing pile of questions. But mostly I just wanted to justify using Crayons as an adult.
Eric
: I have always been attracted to art. It honestly never even occurred to me to study anything else in college, much to my parents’ chagrin, because it was just naturally what I knew I was going to do.
Are you an artist as well?
Natalie
: Yes, I am! More recently, I’ve been doing more research into color and pigment than making art, but it all comes back around. I have been doing some very small sketches and iPad drawings, which I’m still deciding whether or not I like.
Eric
: I am a painter and a printmaker. I need to update my webpage, but here is a link to some of my paintings:
http://ericjleffler.carbonmade.com