Curator Kelly Taxter Picks 6 Artworks That She’d Love to Stay Home With
Artnet Galleries Team
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Now through June 20, Artnet Galleries is partnering with the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) to showcase exhibitions from 180 of NADA’s members. Be sure to see them all here.
Each week, we’ll be bringing you a specially curated selection of highlights picked by an expert. For this edition, we look to Kelly Taxter, curator of The Jewish Museum in New York. Over the course of her career, she has organized the career surveys of Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Isaac Mizrahi, focused projects with Vivian Suter, Laurie Simmons, Eva LeWitt, Alex Israel, Eliza Douglas, Willem de Rooij, Chantal Joffe, and Valeska Soares, and co-curated thematic exhibitions including “Unorthodox” and “Take Me (I’m Yours).”
We asked Kelly to choose her favorite “six artworks to stay home with.” See her selections below and read on to learn more about how Kelly is passing time in quarantine:
Jonas Mekas, Dumpling Party (1971). Courtesy of APALAZZOGALLERY.
Rosena Finister, Untitled (2017). Courtesy of Creative Growth.
Robert Gordon, Untitled (1968). Courtesy of Alden Projects.
Janice Guy, Untitled (2019). Courtesy of White Columns.
Robert Rauschenberg, Joo Untitled, Ft. Myers (1979). Courtesy of Independent Curators International.
Joan Snyder, SHE (2017). Courtesy of CANADA gallery.
Tell us about one of your selected artworks and why you would want to live with it.
Jonas Mekas’s unique polaroids, which are included in the solo exhibition “Ahead, ahead we move through the stormy seas with all sails open” at Apalazzogallery, capture a brief moment, the essence of Jonas’s moving image work which poetically chronicled, presented, and described a life as it unfolded in real-time or how it was felt while looking back.
What music are you listening to now while at home?
Jonathan Horowitz’s playlist, “Long Island Songbook,” and a lot of 50’s Jamaican ska and rocksteady.
What book(s) would you recommend reading during quarantine?
Jonas Mekas’s I Seem to Live. A very dear friend of Jonas’s gave this to me right before it came out, sometime in February. Little did he know… its 900 pages would keep me company all quarantine long.
What experience at home has provided you with the most respite or relief from all of the terrible news?
Walks in the woods, cooking, um… drinking…
What has been the most impactful movie/TV show you’ve watched lately?
Watching and rewatching Jonas’s films, which at their core are about interiority and sociability, the quiet life of home and the bigness of the world outside, ecstasy, sadness, nature, New York City, all the many and different things that bind us together and that keep us going.
What are you most excited about doing once the stay at home order has been lifted?
The basics: seeing my parents and my friends, going to work, getting my daily green juice from John at Food Liberation, taking the elevator without anxiety, going to see art and then walking way longer than I expected cuz the weather is so nice, and eating out – constantly.
Is there a charity you would recommend for people to donate to right now?
Since we’re here on Artnet, I recommend donating to cultural institutions and non-profits that directly support artists—finally become a member, or simply give to the places you frequently visit, the ones that feed your brain and your soul, and the organizations that enable artists to do their work—they all need your help.
Here are a few links to my own museum and other personal favorites:
Explore the full range of NADA member gallery exhibition on Artnet Galleries here.
