Multimedia Story

How Did Things End Up Here? Art Curator Alisa McCusker

 

A relatively bustling crowd fills the small café at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA)—if you call a crowd 12 people—at noon on a Tuesday. All too busy to notice Alisa McCusker, the senior curator at the UMFA, enter the lobby in front of the café. She is the woman who is entirely responsible for what they will see on the museum walls that day.

 

With a graceful stride, calm but intentional, her hair pinned up off her solid black shirt accentuated only by a vibrant blue scarf that captures the eye before anything else. McCusker’s personal style is the embodiment of her UMFA galleries. She deliberately hand-picks pieces and sets them against a simple, austere background to fully communicate the art’s form, function, and the stories they convey. For McCusker, the process always begins with a question followed by team collaboration.

 

Selecting work, McCusker explains, has nothing to do with the self. Forget personal preferences, if she had to choose balloon animal sculptures, a style she does not quite understand, she would do so for the greater good of the museum community. When building a gallery room, she works on a piece-by-piece basis, but she always asks, “How do I inspire the awe that I have about my very focused subject but do that more broadly and create ways for people to enter the museum?”

 

McCusker brings those questions to the table with her team of curators, marketers, and museum educators, and collaborates with them. Together, they collectively choose from the 22,000 pieces of art that comprise the museum’s collection. After they put all the ideas on the table, though, McCusker decides what art will represent the many groups who will tour the museum. 

 

"We have galleries for American and European, which are my specializations, but it's important that we also have spaces for African, Pacific, Japanese, East Asian art and all different kinds of material to represent the global perspective on art making," she says. 

 

McCusker stands in front of the art she chose, eight paintings hung from the four walls, two pieces of adapted San Ildefonso pottery sit in a glass case, and a Diné weaved saddle blanket draped over as it would have been used. The art she selected for the gallery room was deliberate, an effort to represent the true and full history of westward expansion in America. “It was important for me to represent the diversity of, not just creativity and different styles that artists work in, but the different makeup of American identity,” says McCusker.

 

The Picture of a Curator

 

McCusker says her work is not the typical societal picture

of an art curator; she's not an archeologist.

"I'm not going out and finding things and holding them

in my bare hands like they’re some kind of miraculous

relic from a past civilization," she says. Her reality as a

curator is far removed from the Hollywood picture than

most people imagine. In curating, there is less focus on

discovery and more on storytelling, and emails.

 

“There are lots of different ways to enter this world.

And I think a lot of my job is to just be open to

different ideas, and then try to find those wonderful little

stories in there to tell and bring people in,” McCusker says. 

 

She emphasizes there is no one door to enter through to experience art, and that understanding drives her curation. When the museum walls are bare, McCusker does not just pack them full of random art, she takes the time to choose pieces that will grow mouths and speak to the audiences.

 

Art is more than a beautiful decoration for McCusker, it can hold up a mirror to a viewer or throw them down an emotional renaissance. “It's a source of happiness and pleasure for us to look at these things, but also broadens conversations. Being critical about the world we live in for good and bad, right? Being critical about things makes us realize just how amazing something might be,” she says.

 

But before McCusker can get to hanging art, she must first communicate. Communication is fundamental to being a curator, it makes the museum’s world go around and moves things forward, explains McCusker.

 

After McCusker arrived at the with a heart full of art and a collaborative mindset, Associate Curator of Collections Luke Kelly saw a major shift in the museum’s dynamic. 

 

“She is far more communicative. I think sometimes in museums, even in small museums, you can get so siloed. The curators don't talk to the educators, the educators talk to collections, so it's about good communication, and it starts with our managers, Alisa, being one of them,” Kelly says.

 

McCusker’s collaborative approach in her work were shaped long before her career in the museum world.

 

The Curious Growing Pains

 

McCusker did not grow up going to museums.

 

40 miles southeast of the Twin Cities along U.S. Route 52 lies the little town of Cannon Falls, Minnesota with a cozy population of around 3,000. In her earliest years, Alisa grew up on a farm outside of town. The youngest of four kids and the daughter of high school sweethearts, she grew up in a working-class household where financial struggles were always lingering in the background.

 

For someone pursuing a career in art history, this was not the typical starting point.

 

“It was really hard because my family kind of didn't understand what I was doing. I thought it was incredibly risky,” McCusker says. “They just didn't know what I would do with that in a real way. So yeah, like the family culture was that was hard.”

 

Making her way was never going to be easy. Art was distant from her family’s lives, and the pressure of their uncertainty clung to McCusker. Yet, her passions persisted and pushed her deeper into higher education despite doubts from others—and from within herself. 

 

“I do remember a moment with my advisor in my MA program when I just said to her, ‘I just need you to tell me, can I do this?’ And she's said, ‘Absolutely, you could do this. There's no reason why you can't,’” her advisor said.

 

Fading worries and a surplus of art, McCusker was ready to get to work and return to the core reason why she chose this path. For her, the joy comes from studying

original works of art there were created at specific

moments in time and layered with meaning.

 

McCusker felt the thrill of uncovering these stories.

Each piece was shaped by context and purpose by

the person that made it. These bundles of history and

identity give her a sense of fulfillment, and not just

as an academic but as a human connecting with

others’ experiences. 

 

The Aura of a Place

 

“The idea that this isn't just a photograph of something, but this is the original thing that someone else held in their hands or that they made for this important reason. And that's still thrilling to me. I still get goosebumps. I believe really strongly that the responsibility of a curator is to care,” says McCusker.

 

Curator comes from the Latin word curare, which means to take care of or to care for. For McCusker, this sense of care is not just toward the art, but she feels personally responsible for caring for the people that interact with it, both staff and audiences. 

 

McCusker describes herself as a link on a chain of people, and she takes that to heart. 

 

                                                                            “It’s not just about me or what kind of accolades does the museum get                                                                                for a certain exhibition. It's not just about the here and now, but we                                                                                    really think in terms of forever, as long as possible,” she says.

 

                                                                            The museum is fostered upon uplifting one another and creating a space                                                                             where everyone feels like themselves, explains Associate Curator Emily                                                                             Lawhead. When a rare donation came in for Lawhead’s department,                                                                                    Alisa was palpable as if it were her own.

 

                                                                            Even though the painting would technically be joining the collection                                                                                   under my purview, she was incredibly supportive, and we continue to                                                                                 work closely on its interpretation and display. I stop by to see the                                                                                       painting every day and I always smile,” says Lawhead.

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According to staff, the museum is more than a space to look at art; it is a place of connection and dialogue, built upon shared values that are set by McCusker. The museum is described by McCusker as place shaped by care, curiosity, and communication. A direct reflection of the dedicated people that work there and their collective efforts.