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Category: In Dialogue

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Curatorial visions at Montclair Art Museum

In Dialogue
Tom Nussbaum: But Wait, There’s More!, Montclair Art Museum, installation view, photo courtesy of Jason Wyche

During her more than thirty years at the Montclair Art Museum, Dr. Gail Stavitsky, Chief Curator, has shaped the institution’s vision through exhibitions that deepen public understanding of art history while highlighting under-recognized artists. Her work extends beyond the galleries to publications that introduce new scholarly perspectives — including the recent catalogue accompanying Tom Nussbaum: But Wait, There’s More! In this interview, Dr. Stavitsky discusses her curatorial approach and the ideas guiding the Museum’s current exhibitions by Tom Nussbaum and Christine Romanell.

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Susan Cohen – Engrossed in Egg Tempera

In Dialogue
Work in progress, Constellation, Nasturtium, egg tempera on panel.  Photo, courtesy of Cecilia Andre

Painter Susan Cohen began her artistic journey by depicting the interiors of the places she lived, drawn to the emotional resonance of light and shadow. While that early intensity has softened over time, her fascination with light remains the core of her practice — animating her still lifes, landscapes, cityscapes, and close-up studies of foliage.

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Learning with Trees-Artists for Climate and Environmental Solutions

In Dialogue
 Installation view. Photo courtesy of Martina Tanga

Curator Martina Tanga had been reflecting on the ideas behind Learning With Trees – Artists for Climate and Environmental Solutions long before the exhibition took shape. In 2022, she read Ben Rawlence’s The Treeline, a book tracing how the Boreal forest is shifting under the impact of climate change. That reading sparked the idea that trees could serve as a highly accessible and disarmingly effective way to approach conversations about climate change.

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Samuelle Green: A Human Vocabulary with Steel

In Dialogue
Samuelle Green. By Day: By Night. 2025. (variable size) Installation View — Honesdale, PA. steel, reflective material. photo credit: Samuelle Green Studio

In Samuelle Green’s previous installations such as The Paper Caves and Polypore, viewers encountered forms that were wildly organic in appearance. They were comprised of somewhat amorphous essentialized forms in nature that exist on the micro and macro levels, executed on an immersive human scale, enabling viewers to make a variety of associations with the natural world — pollen grains, clouds, or coral reefs. The new work, By Day: By Night, 2025, is much more specific in its references and seeks to speak a different visual language almost entirely.

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Frances Smokowski at Cavin-Morris Gallery

In Dialogue
Installation view, Cavin-Morris Gallery, photo courtesy the artist

In 2017, during post-concussion recovery and before considering any public audience, Frances Smokowski began drawing as part of her wellness routines. She knew even then that the work could one day be useful and inspiring to others, and she never felt it existed only for her. Pandemic-era synchronicities later led to gallery representation, confirming that this is the moment for her bio-glyphics and energy-scapes to come forward.

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Aleksandra Scepanovic: Site Seen

In Dialogue
Closing Reception, Guests mingle among paintings, neon, and a vintage car, the grungy garage space alive with conversation, community and shared food. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Miller

Aleksandra Scepanovic’s story begins in then-Yugoslavia, where the stark presence of brutalist architecture shaped her early sense of form and space. As a journalist during the 1990s she reported on the Balkan conflicts, bearing witness to the fractured landscapes of cities such as Sarajevo.

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Jeffrey Morabito: The Caged Bird Sings

In Dialogue
Lan Shi, Curator, photo courtesy of Helen Chen

In 2019, an art acquisition trip brought curator Lan Shi from Beijing to New York. When the pandemic extended her stay, she shifted her focus and began working as a full-time freelance curator and art agent. Since then, she has organized more than a dozen exhibitions of varying scale, including her current project with artist Jeffrey Morabito.

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Magnum O-Pspsps at Cornell

In Dialogue
Curator Michael Morgan with George Boorujy’s Dredger (2017) in the Foundry, home to Cornell’s MFA studios. Photo courtesy of Michael Morgan

Curating an exhibition at Cornell doesn’t require waiting until after graduation or climbing a long academic ladder. The Art Department makes the process unusually accessible—for undergraduates, graduates, and faculty alike. Within the department, there are two dedicated galleries, and under the larger umbrella of the AAP College, a third gallery also accepts exhibition proposals. Each semester, a committee comes together to review applications for the following term. It was within this framework that two graduate students took on the challenge of organizing a large group exhibition. Michael Morgan, who co-curated the exhibition with Elina Ansary, tells us about the process behind the show.

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Taylor Bielecki: The Essence of a Moment

In Dialogue
Essence of a Moment, Installation view

The Essence of a Moment, a group exhibition presenting a collection of artists’ contemplations on the makings of a moment. A moment is by its nature fleeting, and it’s by our nature as people that we seek to extend or preserve them; despite their intangibility. This group show engages with the questions – How can one define something as nebulous as a moment? Is it done retrospectively after it has passed? Is it a confluence of occurrences? Or perhaps it exists with the body’s perception of the present moment? These works offer a variety of insights and perspectives into understanding a moment.

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Almond Zigmund: A Dance Between Structure and Disruption

In Dialogue
Almond Zigmund, figure ground yellow, 2023, acrylic on paper, 36 x 53”, photo credit: Jenny Gorman

Almond Zigmund’s work occupies the charged space between structure and disruption. Moving fluidly across sculpture, painting, and installation, her practice explores the intersection of geometry, architecture, and lived experience—often in subtle yet powerful ways. I have the pleasure of discussing her work at the end of her recent exhibition at East Hampton’s Guild Hall. In this interview exchange, Zigmund speaks about the formative influences that shaped her, from growing up in a creative household to navigating the distinct geographies of Brooklyn, Las Vegas, and the East End of Long Island. The conversation delves into the improvisational roots of her approach, her ongoing engagement with spatial systems, and how tension—between control and spontaneity, place and perception, the built and the organic—continues to animate her work. With references to theorists, artists, Zigmund offers a thoughtful and richly textured account of how art can be both experiential and critical, formal and deeply human.

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