Last month, the Brooklyn Museum announced this Robert Wiesenberger has joined its contemporary art team as the Barbara and John Vogelstein Senior Curator of Contemporary Art. Although one of the city’s smaller institutions, the Brooklyn Museum holds a prominent place in the art world, having raised the profile of artists such as Kehinde Wiley. Wiesenberger comes to Brooklyn from the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and we caught up with him to hear about his plans for the new gig.
You have been at this job for several weeks. What surprised you most about the Brooklyn Museum after learning about it from the inside?
The breadth of the collection and the sheer size of the museum surprised me and the fact that it was originally planned to be four times the size. I am also excited by the daily experience of walking through the beautifully renovated Asian Art galleries to get to my office every day. I don’t think it will get old! Even better to see school groups there, talking or sketching. Experiences like that, when I was a kid, are why I do what I do now.
Your job involves growing the collection. What gaps do you see in the Brooklyn Museum’s contemporary collection, or where are the areas for improvement, and how do you propose to fill them?
It’s a great collection and has its strengths. I don’t think it’s provincial, in this area, to ask to gather more of the world-class artists who call Brooklyn home. It is also important to follow the lead of artists in examining some of the defining issues of our time, such as the collapse of the natural systems that support us or what it means to be human in a technologically mediated age. I want to see more of the hybrid practices that thrive in this city, between art, design, sound, experimental publishing and so on.
Does the current market moment represent an opportunity for institutions?
I’m no market expert, but the current moment—which is pretty bleak for all living things—presents an opportunity for museums as places of curiosity, wonder, beauty, connection, exchange, sustained, critical attention, and relatively less commercial pressure. Museums must evolve, but what defines them is also missing. I believe in these institutions in general and the Brooklyn Museum in particular, which is a vibrant and uniquely beloved place in this community and far beyond.
Another part of your job is development”Brooklyn Artists Exhibitionwhich debuted in 2024. How would you like to see it evolve?
The next edition of this show will certainly not be bigger than the last one, which featured 200 artists to celebrate the bicentennial of the museum. It will be more focused, although its exact form remains to be determined. I’m doing studio visits, which I love, and I’m learning from the artists about the artists they’re most interested in.
Coming to the Brooklyn Museum from the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. What were some of your favorite exhibits that you staged there?
I am proud of the show that is being seen there now, for the Paris-based artist Raffaella della Olgawhich uses modified typewriters to make unique artist books. The work is beautiful and intimate and brings together old and new media. I am also proud of a show with the late German-Iraqi artist Lin May Saeedwhich was her first museum presentation (she has an exhibition at New York’s Anton Kern Gallery this spring). Lin did a strange and touching work about animals and human-animal relationships.
That job included teaching. Did you find that the educational component of your work informed your curation?
Absolutely! Seminars and workshops were testing grounds for ideas, excellent grad students contributed directly to projects, and fostering lively discussions is a big part of what curators can do in the gallery.
Your bio says that a recurring area of your research is “ecology and the more-than-human world.” What does this mean? How do you think your work in this regard will inform your stay in Brooklyn?
It means thinking relationally about the systems we live in, both natural and artificial, as many artists are doing. Environmental and social issues are deeply intertwined, and the forces that extract and exploit the natural world do the same to humans (similarly, those least responsible for environmental shocks, globally and locally, are usually hit first and hardest by them). New York City is surprisingly biodiverse, and urban dynamics are often discussed in ecological terms. I am eager to work with artists who explore these questions, whether within the museum galleries or next door at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The feeling, thinking, and feeling skills that museums sharpen are vital now, as artists are tackling multiple forms of intelligence and how to live and even thrive on a dying planet.
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