UK alum returns to campus for ‘Curators in Conversation’

A University of Kentucky alum whose career has taken him from the Andy Warhol Museum to the United Nations is returning to campus to speak with current students about where an arts administration degree can take them.

Aaron Levi Garvey, a graduate of the MA in Arts Administration in the Department of Arts Administration and current director of the Art Museum of West Virginia University, will join UK Art Museum curator Rachel Hooper for an open discussion titled “Curators in Conversation,” 5 p.m. Tuesday, March 31, in the Bolivar Art Gallery, 236 Bolivar Street.

This free event, hosted by the Department of Arts Administration and funded in part by the Gaines Center for the Humanities, is open to the public, but registration is required and is available online.

Garvey and Hooper’s conversation will go behind the scenes of curatorial practice, museum leadership and the work of building meaningful exhibitions and collections for audiences.

Few curators working today have held as many high-profile roles as Garvey. He served as chief curator of the Andy Warhol Museum – one of the most comprehensive single-artist museums in the world – and later reflected on his time at UK in an interview with the College of Fine Arts. He also served as founding chief curator of The Hudson Eye and Long Road Projects Foundation, and director of curatorial affairs at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University. His curatorial work has reached institutions including the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, the Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans, Atlanta Contemporary, and the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

Hooper is curator of the University of Kentucky Art Museum, where she oversees a permanent collection of over 5,000 artworks and organizes the Robert C. May Endowed Speaker Series on photography. She was recently one of only two curators worldwide to receive a curatorial fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation of the Visual Arts for her research on Black photojournalism in Lexington during the Civil Rights Movement.

Garvey’s visit is part of a multi-day residency organized through the Department of Arts Administration, where he earned his master’s degree in 2020. In addition to the public talk, he will spend several days in Lexington working directly with arts administration and art history undergraduate students, offering one-on-one feedback to students during individual studio visits and speaking with the broader arts community at 2nd Story in downtown Lexington.

“Aaron is a wonderful example of what our graduates go on to do,” said Rachel Shane, chair of the Department of Arts Administration. “He came to our program when he was in his first curator position. He realized that he also needed to build his administrative skills. He built a career that has taken him to major museums and curating at an international level. Having him on campus to speak candidly with current students about his path is exactly the kind of connections our programs can create.”

A livestream of “Curators in Conversation” will be available for remote attendees, including students in the department’s fully online master’s degree program.