Exploring Arizona's Vibrant Art Scene: Inside the Tucson Museum of Art's Arizona Biennial with Dr. Julie Sasse

On this week’s show, we’re going to speak with Dr. Julie Sasse of the Tucson Museum of Art about their recently opened exhibit featuring Arizona artists. And we’ll get a glimpse into this Arizona Biennial: The History and Process.

Today is April 9th, my name is Tom Heath and you’re listening to “Life Along the Streetcar”.

Each and every Sunday our focus is on Social, Cultural and Economic impacts in Tucson’s Urban Core and we shed light on hidden gems everyone should know about. From A Mountain to the U of A and all stops in between. You get the inside track- right here on 99.1 FM, streaming on DowntownRadio.org- we’re also available on your iPhone or Android using our very own Downtown Radio app. Reach us by email [email protected] — interact with us on Facebook at LifeAlongTheStreetcar and follow us on Twitter @StreetcarLife

Transcript

Tom Heath

Good morning. It’s a beautiful Sunday in the old Pueblo and you’re listening to KTDT Tucson. Thank you for spending a part of your brunch hour with us on your downtown Tucson community sponsored, all volunteer powered rock and roll radio station.

Tom Heath

On this week’s show, we’re going to speak with Dr. Julie Sasse of the Tucson Museum of Art about their recently opened exhibit featuring Arizona artists. And we’ll get a glimpse into this Arizona Biennial: The History and Process.

Tom Heath

Today is April 9, 2023. My name is Tom Heath and you are listening to life along the streetcar. Each and every Sunday, our focus is on social, cultural, and economic impacts in Tucson’s urban core, and we shed light on hidden gems everyone should know about, from a mountain to the University of Arizona and all stops in between. You get the inside track right here on 99.1 FM, streaming on downtownradio.org, also available on your iPhone or Android with our very own Downtown Radio Tucson app, you can interact with us on

Tom Heath

Facebook and Instagram. And for more information about our show, maybe information on our book or past episodes, or simply just to contact us, head over to Life Along the Streetcar.org. And of course, you can listen to this podcast on any, I’d say most platforms like Spotify, itunes, and even just asking your smart speaker to play Life Along the Streetcar podcast. Well, April means films here in Tucson. We’re about to enter into the 31st Arizona International Film Festival. This is a fabulous two weeks or so of great films here in the Tucson area, most of which are going to be at the screening room in downtown. If you’d like to know more about the history of the Arizona Film Festival, then you can head over to our website, lifelongstreetcar.org and just plug in Arizona International Film Festival in the search bar and you’ll hear a couple of our past episodes where we really dig into the history. We’ve even had the privilege of interviewing some of the artists that are involved in making

Tom Heath

in creating this event. It all kicks off here in a couple of weeks. I don’t even know if it’s a couple of weeks. Yeah, April 19 is a Wednesday, and then really, the schedule really ramps up on Thursday the 20th and it’s going to go through the end of April. If you’d like to know what films are playing, how to get tickets, how to get involved, you can head over to filmfestivalarizona.com and they will get all those details for you. And I can tell you from doing these interviews in the past, the idea not just of how wonderful some of these films are, but they also have shorts. They’ve got a variety of topics and genres. So you can find something that you like and maybe stretch your imagination there a little bit and find something that you weren’t sure you would like. But then all of a sudden you’re like, wow, this is awesome. And speaking of awesome, we’ve got the Tucson Museum of Art right here in downtown Tucson. And we have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Julie Sasse, the head curator

Tom Heath

of the museum, about some of their exhibits and mainly something called the Arizona Biennial, which sounds like it’s every two years, but it can be a little flexible on that. But it’s an exhibit featuring all Arizona artists, very competitive to get into and very interesting. Here’s the interview we recorded earlier this week with Dr. Sasse.

Dr. Julie Sasse

Actually I have been working with Arizona artists for decades. Quite frankly, I came to Arizona in around 1974 to go to school at Arizona State University as an art student. And so I got to know many of the artists that were emerging in the early seventy s at that time. And then I stayed on to teach for a little bit at ASU, left for a short time to teach art in Washington State and returned at the very end of the kind of had several lives within the arts. I worked at the famed Elaine Horwich Galleries, which eventually I got to write the book about Elaine Horowich. But for 14 years I worked with Suzanne Brown Gallery and all of those dealers were focusing on Arizona or Southwest artists. So pretty much my whole professional career has been looking at artists from this region and in particular this state. And then I came down to Tucson in 1995 to be the galleries curator for the Joseph Gross and Lionel Rombach Galleries. And at the time this memorial student union that had three exhibition

Dr. Julie Sasse

spaces within it. And so I was doing probably about five exhibitions a month for about five years. So good thing I had a lot of energy.

Tom Heath

I was going to say just doing one exhibition a month, that’s tremendous. But not only are you putting it together, but you’ve got to be researching what’s coming next.

Dr. Julie Sasse

Exactly. And for me, I think my experience working in galleries where you do quick turnarounds like two shows a month. The gallery I worked in, they had up to four galleries at a time. So I was a multitasker,

Dr. Julie Sasse

multitasker extraordinaire. I think that’s one reason why they hired me. I remember in the interview at the university I said, I don’t have a cat, I don’t have a dog, I don’t have a boyfriend, a husband, a wife, or pets, whatever. And I said, I live for art. And they went, okay, she’s hired, she’s hired.

Tom Heath

And then you didn’t sleep for the next one how many years?

Dr. Julie Sasse

Long time. But then I came to the Tucson Museum of Art. Actually it was Bob Yassin was the director at the time and Joanne Stewart was the curator here. And they both approached me and said, would you like to be our first contemporary curator? And so I came in 2000 and quite frankly I thought I’ll stay three years because we all do that make it a short term sort of trajectory. And I ended up staying 23. I guess I liked it.

Tom Heath

Well, fantastic. That kind of leads me into just some basic questions about curation. So you came on as a contemporary curator. So in a museum like the Tucson Museum of Art, how many different and now you’re the chief curator, but under you, I would assume that you’ve got different genres. And how many curators work for a museum like this?

Dr. Julie Sasse

Well, we’re a small museum, so we have three curators. I am modern and contemporary. Christine Brinza is Art of the American West and Indigenous Art, and Christopher Driggers is Art of Latin America, and he encompasses all the eras from the ancient Americas to the colonial Americas to contemporary, modern and contemporary. So it’s still I mean, with 10,000 pieces in the collection, it’s an awful lot of objects and areas to encompass. And Christine also creates displays with our small but mighty Asian art collection. So we keep busy.

Tom Heath

Yeah. So then the job of the curator, is it the acquisition of items or is it the display of items? Is it both?

Dr. Julie Sasse

It’s one facet of it. One of the areas is, of course, to build the collection or to make recommendations for conservation or deaccessioning, which is a rare case, but that can happen. They do the reports that present the works to a collections committee. They raise funds for certain acquisitions or grants. It’s very much based on building that collection when it’s a collecting institution. But curators are out in the public interacting with artists and checking on the latest trends and being aware of the art in their area all over the country, all over the world. So there’s a lot of benchmarking and research that goes into whichever field it is, the latest issues to watch for, the latest research that’s been done. But ultimately, it’s to then utilize that collection that’s been built and fine tuned and find ways to find interesting and educational context to put it in, ways to make it informative about maybe the era in which it was created, but also perhaps how it is referred to in works

Dr. Julie Sasse

in current times. So something from ancient Americas, maybe it’s pairing it with a contemporary work. So you really have to have a broad sense of history, art history, what’s happening now, what happened before. It is a daunting task. But if you love your field, it’s all research and connections you want to do.

Tom Heath

Yeah. And then you have to have the skill set to communicate that and articulate it in a way that people can understand that aren’t in that field all the time.

Dr. Julie Sasse

Exactly. I mean, you can complain, oh, I had to work all weekend. But if what you do all weekend is what other people pay money to be able to be a part of, then how hard can that work be? Laundry go to an art opening. I think I’ll go to the art opening.

Tom Heath

I’ve got to go work again at that Darn museum and see all these fantastic artists shoot. Exactly how does, definition wise, like a museum, the Tucson Museum of Art. How does that differ from a gallery?

Dr. Julie Sasse

Well, a gallery, although depending on the situation, like in Great Britain, museums can be called galleries or the National Gallery. It’s still a collecting institution. But there’s the commercial gallery and that is the works are for sale or art center implies it’s not a collecting institution. Okay. Now. Mocha Tucson. They don’t actively collect. It’s not an encyclopedic or a robust collecting institution, but they do own a few pieces. But we call galleries within our institution, if we say such and such gallery, it just means the name of the space, the room.

Tom Heath

Okay. Kind of hurrying those terms and wasn’t quite sure how to use those. We’ll be back to that interview with Dr. Julie Sasse of the Tucson Museum of Art where I learned more fabulous art terms in just a moment. But first of all, I do want to remind you that you’re listening to Life Along the Streetcar. We are on downtown Radio 99.1 FM streaming on downtownradio.org, also available on our app, Downtownradio Tucson. And you can also get us on Tune In. We don’t talk a lot about that, but tune in is another place you can listen to us on the downtown radio.

Tom Heath

So we’re back. We’re going to finish up the second half of the interview we recorded with Dr. Sasse of the Tucson Museum of Art. She is the chief curator and telling us a little bit about the museum in general, how things work, her history, which I always find it fascinating when people are in town for a short period of time and then we just keep them grappled here and they can’t get away. So it’s nice to know that we’ve had all of this experience through our Museum of Art. One of the reasons for the call that we wanted to really talk about the Arizona Biennial it’s the very anticipated showcase that happens typically every couple of years, been going on for decades and highlighting our Arizona artists. So we’ll get back into that interview with Dr. Sasse and get a little bit more on the Arizona Biennial. But as we’re talking about exhibits and exhibitions, you’ve got, I think, the impetus for this call. Your Biennial Arizona focused exhibit just launched here on April 1.

Dr. Julie Sasse

Yes, biennials are, of course, implied that they’re every other year biannual, they say biennial, and sometimes we’ve had them on odd years, sometimes even years. Of course, COVID changed some things, and I think once we might have had a recession hit us and we had to do a cancellation. So we have had biennials officially, as called Arizona biennials since 1980. But this institution in one form or name or another has been around since 1924, and we’re having our big centennial next year. And within that time period, they had annual juried competitions, which is what this is, is a juried competition or juried exhibition with a couple of awards, but you have to apply to be in, and a juror does the selecting. So we’ve had them officially with that title since 1980, but since 1948, we’ve had official kinds of exhibitions like the Tucson festival show or the annual craft exhibition. So we’ve had a different number of iterations of this. But they all focus on for the most Arizona artists with

Dr. Julie Sasse

someone else who selects the works.

Tom Heath

And that’s what I found interesting. So this exhibit is all people from Arizona. They’re all artists that focus in some part within our state in different disciplines, not necessarily the same type of art.

Dr. Julie Sasse

Right.

Tom Heath

And they have different categories, and they submit their work, and then you have a juror. Is it a person or is it a group of people that make that decision?

Dr. Julie Sasse

Well, that’s what’s interesting. Well, what’s funny on top of that is in 1976, I think it was, I actually was in, whatever, the first biennial or annual show. I was in it as an artist. And I remember coming into the brand new building thinking, I think this is fabulous. This is a wonderful space. And then to come back into actually being the curator here, I just find it such a joy. But I can’t imagine being in my early 20s thinking that I would actually be working there.

Tom Heath

Right. Just happy to get your art selected.

Dr. Julie Sasse

I always thought that it was a group decision and that in 1999, joanne Stewart was the curator, I think, at that time, or at least I think she’s the one who initiated a single juror. So I thought it was always a group decision up till that time. But I just a couple of days ago did some research, and I found out that in 1980, the first juror was Barbara Haskell, who was a curator at the Whitney in New York. And I just thought that was fascinating because that long ago, the museum felt that confident to ask someone that important from New York to come out to jury the show. And what was even more fascinating is 970 artists applied, or maybe it was the number of works, but the point is huge number considering the state. I just find that just fascinating.

Tom Heath

And then this year, the juror I saw also someone of prominence from the Smithsonian National Gallery. Correct?

Dr. Julie Sasse

Right. In a way, I’ve kind of done my best to what I found is I even did a survey once and I said, would you like me to make the selections or would you like me to pick someone from outside? They all said outside. Not that they didn’t trust me, but everybody is so anxious to have their work looked at by a big name curator so that they might be considered for something beyond Arizona. And I thought that’s the biggest gift I can give them is to find people that might remember their name or include them in something. And so I do it with a great deal of pleasure. This is, I think, my 8th Biennial, at least, because I’ve been here since 2000. So give or take. And so if I pick a female juror, sometimes the next time I’ll pick a male, or if they’re from California, the next time they might be from Texas. So I find that kind of another way of making sure that I’ve done right by the idea of the outside perspective. But this time I did pick Tyina Carragal. And she is the curator with a focus on Latinx

Dr. Julie Sasse

and Latin American art and dealing with a lot of the current issues of today. She was actually the director of their big triennial, the outwind Boucherve. I don’t know if the pronunciation is right, but Boucher Portrait Competition. And she was actually the curator who led the portrait commission for former President Obama. And it was Cahendi Wiley’s portrait of him. So I find that of the quality that we seek to have eyes on our artists.

Tom Heath

And it seems like, from what little I read of her, that there was this influence of Latin America, the Latinx that she brought to the National Gallery. And so coming to Arizona, it seems like that’s a really good fit for someone to look at some of the artists that are presenting from Arizona.

Dr. Julie Sasse

Absolutely. And I thought for sure, because her focus is on that, then all of our Latinx artists would have a chance to be noticed. Sometimes they go with the low hanging fruit, and so they go to New York and Chicago. So here’s a chance to say, look what’s happening here. And she was impressed.

Tom Heath

Do you know how many submissions that she had to sort through?

Dr. Julie Sasse

Yeah, I think I have those stats handy. I think it was about 500 and some or 480, around 500 artists. And if they all do, no more than 1500. So I think it was more like 1000 works of art. And we do it in two days. And when people say, can you discuss why I wasn’t selected? I said, you’re not going to like hearing this. But it’s not that the juror takes two months to figure this out. It’s a yes no. It’s a gut reaction. Yes, no, yes, no, maybe. Can I see the statement? Can I see this work again, but they don’t have a lot of time, so it’s based on curators. After a while, we can pick up on something pretty darn fast. And the show is stunning. It’s really great. I never feel like we short change anyone.

Tom Heath

How many pieces then, of that 1000 or so that were reviewed, how many made it into the exhibit?

Dr. Julie Sasse

I think it’s 67 works, maybe.

Tom Heath

Oh, my God.

Dr. Julie Sasse

Something like that. And 56 artists got picked.

Tom Heath

Oh, my goodness. So that is a huge accomplishment to make it into that selection.

Dr. Julie Sasse

And my only regret is we have to work with our space. Sometimes I tell an artist, if they feel bad they didn’t get in, I would have taken you. We all would have taken you, but there was just not enough room. We can’t make the place bigger or take down all the art from our collection. So I always tell people, you just can’t take it personally. Just keep applying, keep working. I always liken it to the TV show The Voice. They have to whittle it down in a certain number of weeks and they just can’t take everybody. Everybody can’t be a winner, and it’s just for the competition. It doesn’t mean you’re not a winner in your own right for the work you do.

Tom Heath

And Dr. Sasha, then, can you tell us a little bit? The exhibit launched on April 1. How long is it going to be there? How do people get involved? How do they find more information?

Dr. Julie Sasse

Sure. Well, the website is the best place, and it opens, as I said, April 1, and it goes through October 1. So we’ve got a good long run with it and video, paintings, weavings, ceramic work, sculptures. It’s really quite remarkable. And I will say that what’s remarkable especially is that the artists are really thinking deeply about their environment, about their politics, about our culture today, about society. And of course, the new element that people reflect on is the sense of loss from COVID and the fear of life not being exactly as we planned it because of the sudden changes that happen. So I think it’s really something we should all be proud of to see what these artists have come up with. And we have a couple of events coming up on April 6. We’ve got our free first Thursday, and we’ve got a couple of artist spotlights, jacqueline Arius and Saskia Jorda. She just got selected as one of the Arizona Art or the Arizona Artists for the National Museum of Women in the Arts women to Watch

Dr. Julie Sasse

exhibition. And then on June 1, we’ll have another feature on a Thursday, which is a free first Thursday featuring Matt McGee and Alejandro Plattoris. And then later in September, Safwat Saleem and Lydia C. And these are all people who are just quite accomplished already in their own right. So pretty exciting stuff.

Tom Heath

And all that available through your website. And then there are costs for admission unless you’re a member of the museum.

Dr. Julie Sasse

There is, but I think that the second Sunday is a free family day, so that’s a good time to come. And the free first Thursday, so you can just wait for those times. And lots of fun with those evenings as well with food trucks and music.

Tom Heath

Sometimes there will link to your website so people can get all that information as well. And Dr. Sauce, thank you for your time. I know you got a lot going on, so spending a few minutes with.

Dr. Julie Sasse

Us, it’s very thank you very much.

Tom Heath

Dr. Sasse, the chief curator of the Tucson Museum of Art on what I understand is your 20th extension of your three year stint with the by July.

Dr. Julie Sasse

I’ll be 23 years here.

Tom Heath

Yeah. So after the first three years, it’s just been a one year extension for the last 20 years. Is that kind of how you’re doing it?

Dr. Julie Sasse

That’s right.

Dr. Julie Sasse

Nothing beats this job.

Tom Heath

That was Dr. Julie Sasse. She’s the chief curator for the Tucson Museum of Art talking to us about the museum itself, her history in that role, some really cool exhibits and really featuring the Arizona Biennial launched April 1. It’ll be here for a while, here until October for a chance for everyone to get down there and see all of these Arizona artists and also learn more about just the other exhibits that are happening at the Museum of Art. We’ll link to their page from our website or from our Facebook page so that you can get those links to some of the community nights that they have available with low or no cost to get in. My name is Tom Heath. You are listening to life along the Streetcar on downtown Radio 99.1 FM and streaming on downtownradio.org.

Tom Heath

Well, that’s another fantastic show we’ve had the pleasure of putting together here. This is episode number 243 going on five and a half years. Five and a half years you’ve been putting up with me out there. All kinds of fun stuff coming up here later in the month. I want to first of all, thank Dr. Sasse right at the time that they’re launching a new exhibit. Of course, I reach out and say, hey, let’s spend some time on the phone and talk about it. And she was very gracious to do so. And we’re always blessed with people that are willing to share their time with us. Coming up next week, fun show with Zoe Ray. She is a fire dancer. They’ve been performing for decades here in the Tucson area. And they’ve got a fourth Friday event coming up at Skybar. So we reached out to her to talk about that and about her company that she co owns called Cirque Roots. And I found out there’s quite a circus element here in Tucson. And it’s a little literal circus, not the metaphors that sometimes we use to

Tom Heath

describe certain situations, but it’s an actual circus environment here in Tucson. So we’ll chat with her and then coming up towards the end of the month, we’ve got a u of a student master, a doctoral student that came from Costa Rica specializing in the violin. We get this really interesting story of why Tucson was selected, the music scene here in Tucson, and a little bit about the academics around music and what that leads to. So that’ll be a fun show coming up here in a couple of weeks. If there’s something you would like us to cover, then tell us. You always assume when you’re listening to a hyper local show like this that you are in tune with what’s happening in our town. So tell us your comments, the concerns, things that we should be sharing, and if you have a Tucson focused social media account, then we would like to share what you’re doing. So maybe tag us on Instagram or Facebook or share something on our page that we can then share out and get more information about Tucson out

Tom Heath

in the world. And if there’s topics you want us to cover, of course, tag us in there as well so that you can connect with us. For us, it’s collaboration is the key. We want this show from the day one. We’ve said it’s a community conversation and that dialogue happens on a two way street. It’s just not us coming up with topics and broadcasting. It’s people sharing what they would like to know more about or things that they know that we should be sharing with others. You can reach us by email, [email protected] Facebook, Instagram, websites, all the stuff we mentioned at the beginning. Stay tuned for Tedsky’s words and work coming up here in just a couple of minutes. But we’re going to leave you today with music by Rob Cantor. It’s from a 2021 Fun song called at the Art Museum. I hope you have a great week and tune in next Sunday for more life. Along the streetcar at the Art museum.