When I first interviewed the new executive director of the Center for Contemporary Art, Christina Vassallo, she had only been in town for a few weeks, on March 20. “I’ve been here less than a month,” he said as I set up the tape recorder in the lobby of the city’s iconic Zaha Hadid-designed building.
You may have simply avoided answering questions about long-term plans and existing challenges, mentioning your newness to the city and the impressive construction celebrating its 20th anniversary as one of Cincinnati’s architectural gems. Prior to coming here, she was the Executive Director of the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia since 2020 and, prior to that, the executive and artistic director of Cleveland’s chosen art venue, SPACES.
But it should be noted that Vassallo knew that the CAC needed someone who would respond promptly to a number of concerns. The museum, which does not fundraise, was operating on a shoestring budget, due to a loss of profits in the worst years of the COVID pandemic. In 2022, Marcus Margerum, then interim director (now chief commercial officer and deputy director), told me that the CEC’s annual operating budget had fallen from a pre-pandemic high of $4. 4 million to about $3. 8 million, prompting layoffs and pay cuts.
Additionally, it had been almost two years since the organization’s former leader, Raphaela Platow, moved to Louisville to take up her new position as director of the Speed Art Museum. The CAC’s senior curator, Amara Antilla, moved to Portland, Oregon, and directed remotely. Even the place where Vassallo and I met in April, the coffee area in the building’s lobby, had a problem: restaurateurs independents had struggled there, including the complex and acclaimed Fausto, which closed at the end of 2022. The CAC wishes because revenue, as well as traffic in the lobby, can contribute to such a busy area.
But Vassallo did not deviate. She already takes care of those and many other problems and she is willing to give the first evaluations of it. For example, she said, a locally founded curator is a very sensible priority. She is also willing to propose a new, more sensible issue for debate: the benefits of ACC and other arts and cultural establishments that receive investment from the city of Cincinnati or, possibly, some form of tax from Hamilton County.
“Personally, I think the CAC can be at the forefront of those kinds of conversations,” Vassallo said in April. “We all contribute to making the city more livable and exciting. “We’ve established here, do we have to come?Because there’s a lot going on here. Artistic assistance makes the city more livable and exciting. So I think it would be an engaging discussion to have with our elected officials.
After speaking about the issue, Vassallo warned that the issue “is something that touches my heart, but that’s not why I’m here. That’s not why I chose to lead the ACC. “
Redefining and advocating for the arts’ role in the larger community—and doing so in a positive, approachable manner—is something she’s been adept at her entire professional career.
Christina Vassallo is 43 years old, lives in the city centre and remains marginalised from her private life. Otherwise, she’s content to tell her story: She grew up in New York City and straight New Jersey, where she earned her graduate degree in nonprofit visual arts. He took control of New York University and began his career in the Big Apple. He projects a lighthearted informality on the user and Zoom, smiling and laughing in his interviews and speaking with expert positivity not only about the long-term of the CAC, but also about its importance. of art to enrich lives.
In addition, she has an inspiring physical presence with her curly black hair in the shape of a bow, reminiscent of the photographs of Narges Mohammadi, the imprisoned Iranian women’s and human rights defender who recently received the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts. Due to restrictions, women in Iran are required to wear headscarves in public. For many, hair is synonymous with freedom.
Vassallo likes to think outside the box of artistic tactics to engage the community. As executive director of Flux Factory in New York City in 2013, she co-hosted and moderated Flux Death Match, a discussion series on topics of interest to artists. as well as the general public, such as how to deal with the concentration of wealth and strength in the nonprofit world.
One of his presentations at SPACES in Cleveland A Color Removed in 2018, in which the gallery collected donated items containing the color orange and then curated an exhibition. It’s a specific reaction to the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who shot and killed. Through the police he thought his toy gun was genuine because the orange protective tip had been removed.
“The question we asked Cleveland was what would happen if we removed that security symbol,” Vassallo said in a Zoom interview in early October. “Would we all be safer, or would none of us be safe, or would we still enjoy security?”On other levels? It was a really exciting project. I think of exhibitions as a reflection on paintings: what kind of probabilities are revealed when we paint with artists in new ways?
Vassallo had a strong impact on the other people she met in Cincinnati even before she officially began her work. Or, in fact, even before I had it. It can be simply said that during those first few interactions, other people heard their “love language. “
“The first thing everyone notices about her early on is her energy,” says Gale Beckett, chair of the CEC’s board of trustees and a member of the search committee that advised Vassallo. “It comes out of the written page, it comes out of a phone call, it comes out of a Zoom meeting, and it actually comes out in person. He loves to collaborate, and that’s not the case in the art world. In one of our interviews with her, she used the words, “Collaboration and partnerships are my love language. “
Beckett says Vassallo made an effort to meet with any and all staff and board members, network leaders, artists, industry professionals, and education professionals. “She loves meeting other people and making connections in new ways,” Beckett says. “This has manifested itself in examples of their past roles and, in fact, turns out to be true now. “
This display of enthusiasm inspired Cal Cullen when he was still executive director of the Wave Pool at Camp Washington, which is considered a center for the dissemination of new art (Cullen is now a program manager for the Haile Foundation).
“The week before he officially joined the CAC was when the National Board of Education for the Ceramic Arts held its conference here, and it was an incredibly busy and entertaining week for the arts in Cincinnati,” Cullen recalls. “Christina came here to Wave Pool for the opening reception for our 3 new exhibitions. He made an effort to introduce himself to me and other staff members and artists and to network and build relationships. It is very vital to the Center for Contemporary Art.
For my Zoom interview with Vassallo, she was in New York City to see museum exhibits, and she added Henry Taylor: Whitney’s B-Side, which features unique portraits of the Los Angeles artist whose subjects are typically African-American. Taylor, he says, had been an artist-in-residence and had presented an exhibition at his studio and fabric museum that same year.
In fact, Vassallo has brought her new role to Cincinnati, and the establishment that hired her is reaping the rewards. CEC administrators were far-sighted when they announced a $4. 7 million operating budget for the fiscal year that began in September, expecting a strong recovery from the pandemic crisis, and introduced a strategic plan development procedure to plan for the coming years.
Vassallo also announced the fulfillment of his most sensible priority, which is the hiring of a full-time curator. Theresa Bembnister, who debuted in late October, had been at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock since 2020, first as associate curator and then curator. Before that, she spent five years at the Akron Museum of Art, where she earned the name of curator. Bembnister will live here, which Vassallo said is crucially important.
“I surveyed the staff and asked them what we needed in a new curator, and resoundingly I heard they thought it really required and deserved someone who is going to live in the city and help forge the connections with the artistic talent in the region,” says Vassallo. “Our curator is really going to be tasked with not only bringing an international and national perspective to our programming but also understanding the local talent pool and incorporating that into her work.”
Meanwhile, Antilla, who served as general curator after moving to Portland, moved to the Washington, D. C. , area. and was a guest curator. She curated an exhibition at the CAC that opened in November and runs through April 14, 2024: Tai Shani: My Bodily Remains, the first solo museum exhibition in the United States for the British artist. It presents a new site-specific installation and a feature film.
But the biggest exhibition of the year, which will remain open until January 28, 2024, celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Lois Center for Contemporary Art.
The show is a tribute to the Iraqi-born and London-based Hadid, whose CAC building was her first in the U.S. and the first U.S. museum designed by a woman. Architecture critic Herbert Muschamp of The New York Times called it “the most important American building to be completed since the end of the Cold War.” Hadid parlayed its success into an inspiring superstar career. She died of a heart attack in 2016; her firm remains active and has been in the news lately for its rendering of the 1,082-foot-tall Discovery Tower on a mountaintop in Saudi Arabia.
PHOTOGRAPH BY RYAN KURTZ
For the CAC exhibition, Borjabad commissioned seven new Hadid-inspired works from artists in the Middle East and Europe and secured loans of seven desirable, futuristic artworks through Hadid. One of his works is an initial commission from 1977 that envisioned a 14-story building. Hotel on London’s Hungerford Bridge, over the River Thames, which seems to be in space.
The show’s title derives from a 2011 ode to Hadid written by Lebanese-American poet and essayist Etel Adnan. The passage at its heart was reprinted in a 2016 issue of Artforum magazine: “Hadid is a poet of forms and of the materials that give presence to these forms; one must admire them close up and from afar to discover, in this woman who built on solid rock, a permanent nostalgia for departure. Everything she made seems to always be the day before a departure, a permanent invitation to the imagination and to the imaginary.”
Hadid sought for the CCA’s glass-walled lobby to serve as an “urban carpet” that, according to her architecture firm’s website, “allows pedestrians to enter and cross the interior area via a gentle slope, which becomes, in turn, a wall, ramp, walkways, and even a synthetic park area. And Hadid’s current exhibition is a glorious tribute to that vision. Turkish artist Hera Büyüktasçiyan has allowed six narrow strips of carpets, in brown tones and very sophisticated designs, to cascade down the wall of a floor gallery, like a waterfall. It is a sacrosanct monument committed to the author of the construction and her goals for the construction of the CAC. I wish I could stay there permanently.
Personally, I love the urban carpet of the building. I think I glide smoothly from the front doors to the sloping interior back wall and then climb while defying gravity. I’ve even tried to assemble it several times. And the general darkness of the staircase that is the centerpiece of the corridor catches the eye and demands to pass through to see the art.
But not everyone feels the same magical attraction. They want express reasons to enter the lobby of the CAC from the street, especially if they are not already heading to the exhibitions in the galleries above. And maybe they’ll have a new coffee shop soon, some more sensible one. precedent for Vassallo.
The organization posted on the ArtsWave jobs page in October for a manager to run a space that would be owned and operated by the museum itself. “We’ve decided to take the operation of our café in-house,” says Vassallo. “We did a lot of research on this topic, and we’ve learned it’s nearly impossible for a third party to really make a good profit in a museum café space, especially as American downtowns—where we are and where many museums are located—continue to rebound from the effects of COVID. Not everybody is working on a five-day office schedule anymore, so that has an effect.”
She understands that a café is a guest service that doesn’t seek to generate big profits on its own. “We just want to serve our guests better and make sure they feel comfortable and can have a snack,” he says. A CAC worker sells coffee and snacks in the former Fausto space.
Vassallo also finalized the CCA’s exhibition calendar for the upcoming season, giving a concrete new size to the institution’s future. Exhibits will come with Jayson Musson: His History of Art, a showcase of recent MFA graduates from DAAP and the University of Miami, as well as an art exhibition through CAC staff. “The new season will come with gigantic thematically organized exhibitions and solo exhibitions by living artists, some of whom will live in Cincinnati and others who will set foot [here] for the first time,” he says.
PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL WORCHAL
In her spare time, if any exists, Vassallo continues to envision a better-financed and more stable future for Cincinnati’s arts sector. She believes the pandemic revealed major fault lines in terms of how nonprofits operate and thrive. “This interview isn’t really about my political soapbox, but I think it’s an important conversation to be having,” she says. “We’re still not out of that COVID trench of financial pressure, right? I think there’s a lot more work to be done.”
Vassallo acknowledges the importance of ArtsWave’s long-standing paintings in raising cash for arts organizations in the region (his 2023 office giving crusade raised $11. 9 million for more than 150 artist organizations, projects, and commissions), but says other cities where he has painted have used a variety of public budget for their art groups. Cleveland organizations get investments through a Cuyahoga County tax on cigarette sales, and for a time, the cash was distributed through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. The city recently added the position of Senior Strategist for Arts and Culture. and the Creative Economy.
Philadelphia has an Office of Arts, Culture, and Creative Economy within City Hall. While working there, Vassallo had been appointed by the city council to be a member of the new Arts and Culture Working Group, tasked with developing recommendations for disadvantaged people. communities across the arts and culture sector, specifically in the wake of COVID.
The City of Cincinnati does not have an office, department or staff member committed to aiding the arts, although a “leveraged” system (complete with an arts category) provides direct money to nonprofits with a strong local impact . “There is no express amount or percentage of the total investment allocated to each category [within the program],” says Ben Breuninger, deputy director of communications. “Rather, we knew those spaces as vital to city investment and asked mobilized applicants to identify which category most productively defined their work. ” The ArtsWave Black and Brown Artists program recently won $75,000 from this fund, and ArtWorks won $150,000.
This kind of one-time investment is appreciated, Vassallo says, but it’s not the same kind of year-over-year investment that continuous, dedicated public investment provides. “I think if we had [public investment], it would be less difficult for each and every director of the cultural sector,” he says. “Creating an environment conducive to lifestyles with an investment appetite like this is, in fact, a product of my core task at the helm of the ACC. “
As the CAC tries (and desires) to generate revenue by attracting post-COVID visitors to its downtown site, it continues to feed off the artistic and visionary edge Zaha Hadid has given her construction and that inspires its artists and curators. Vassallo tells me he will do so as he strives to expand his audience for exhibitions and other activities.
“I don’t see challenging work as being in direct opposition to also being welcoming,” she says. “Creating a buttress of support around an exhibition, which our education department does, gives people entry points into a show. What I love about museums, especially contemporary art museums, is visitors have the opportunity in one building to be exposed to so many perspectives. Museums allow us those access points. That’s what I think is so exciting about this kind of work.”