– Courtney Gilbert, the Sun Valley Center for the Arts’ Curator of Visual Arts, has been on the road in the West sharing the work The Center does with colleagues in the museum field and with university students.
In October, Gilbert participated in a panel discussion at the Western Museums Association conference in Palm Springs organized by Julie Decker, Chief Curator at the Anchorage Museum. The topic was “The Contemporary Landscape: Museums and the Environment,” and Gilbert discussed three exhibitions that The Center has organized around environmental themes: The Whole Salmon (2003), Water (2010), and last winter’s Thin Ice, which Gilbert curated.
Other panelists were Barbara Matilsky of the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington, and Katherine Hough of the Palm Springs Art Museum.
In November, Gilbert traveled to Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa to jury the school’s annual student exhibition. In addition to selecting artwork, Gilbert gave a lecture called “Connecting Art to Ideas,” citing examples of how she puts together exhibitions at The Center. She also did studio visits with four students who are working on senior projects.
“I think whenever we can get out there and talk about the work we do here it’s a win-win,” Gilbert says. “Not everyone can get to Ketchum to see our exhibitions, so these talks are a kind of outreach. But I also get such great input from talking about The Center’s work with museum colleagues and with students that I come back reinvigorated and filled with new ideas.”
Courtney Gilbert holds Ph.D. and Master’s degrees in art history from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College. Before joining The Center, Gilbert worked at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, where she coordinated the planning for a major exhibition of Latin American abstract art.
