In the first months of my working as curator of history at the Japanese American National Museum, I was introduced to a blazingly smart, generous woman who was part of an informal network in Los Angeles of Asian and Asian American arts curators. This cordial group of individuals, from as far south as the Clark Center of Japanese Art and Culture in Hanford, and as neighborly as the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, took turns hosting the group to their museum spaces for lunch, tours, and roundtable discussions about our upcoming projects and exhibits, new technologies, new scholarship, and other factors that were shaping the way that we worked.
This one particular curator was already in conversation with JANM since she had proposed a wonderfully compelling proposal to put together an international show of innovative origami, and for the first Asian art curator's gathering, she offered to give me a ride across town to the Fowler Museum at UCLA. Her name is Meher MacArthur, and I'm lucky enough to say that our friendship has endured.
Meher's origami show, "Folding Paper" was a smashing success, and in the meantime, she's picked up a great gig writing about Asian influence on Los Angeles art and artists, for KCET's artbound website, which is another revelation and astonishing resource.
Now here is where the sugar part comes in- last week, just in time for the Lunar New Year observances, Meher interviewed and featured one of her articles on Los Angeles artists whose muse were snakes- and whaddya know- she plucked little ol' me, with my obsession with legless, shedding carnivores, as a highlight.
Triple blush! It is such an honor.
Serpentine 2013: LA Artists Celebrate the Year of the Snake.