Hilton Als On Curation, LA Exhibitions, And His New Role At The Huntington

Hilton Als has been named the inaugural fellow in the history of American art at The Huntington. In the new role, he will create an exhibition based on the Huntington's archival collection.

Als is a writer, New Yorker critic, and a curator who recently put on three exhibits at The Huntington, and a show on Joan Didion at The Hammer Museum.

LAist's Nick Roman spoke with Als ahead of a talk at The Huntington about his recent exhibitions in Los Angeles and his new role. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How Als curates exhibitions

LAist: You've curated a series of contemporary art exhibits at The Huntington. Tell us about those exhibits and how you chose the subjects.

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Hilton Als: That series of exhibitions, it's three women artists, started at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven and they then traveled to the Huntington. And the idea behind that show was women who were born under the sun of empire. One artist was born in India. Another artist Njideka Crosby was born in Africa. The idea was to show their connections to the colonial past, but also their very present future.

I was very drawn to each of those artists having a very strong narrative sense in their work, and also a very clear idea of the interiority of their practice. And I was interested in how these two points converged and were parallel in their work.

Choosing pieces in his most recent show

LAist: Your most recent show was with one of the artists that you mentioned, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, who is a Nigerian-born, LA-based artist. You worked with her to choose those pieces from a painting series that she did that's called “The Beautyful Ones.” Tell us about that.

HA: It's an extraordinary series of works that she's done. They really are about childhood and the ways in which children are on some level exhibited to talk about prosperity. And to talk about the ways in which children function within the family as status symbols, but also how they function as themselves. So, the works that we had in the show are just a few from the series. They're just an incredibly beautiful evocation of not only of childhood, but the ways in which children speak of and to the family.

How his Didion exhibit at the Hammer came to be

LAist: You've been working a lot in Los Angeles recently. You curated an exhibit at the Hammer about Joan Didion. It was called What She Means. How did that project come into being?

HA: I have to thank first and foremost the very great Annie Philbin, who heads the Hammer Museum. She had seen a series of shows I had done in New York at the David Zwirner Gallery. The shows in New York were what I call a kind of portrait. One show was about James Baldwin, another show was about Toni Morrison.

And Annie asked me if there would be any idea that might be appropriate for The Hammer. And I was too shy to tell her at the time – this was in person. And I sent her an email, and all it said was "Joan Didion." And she said, "Great, can you fly out?" I did. And we signed a contract and worked on it for three years. It was a very great experience.

How his written work informs his curation

LAist: How does your written work relate to the role that you have now as a curator?

HA: What I feel is that the curatorial work really is an extension of my work as an essayist. Except that with a museum show or a gallery show, you're using objects to contextualize a story.

The story that we were telling at The Hammer about Joan Didion was also the story of Sacramento, which is her hometown. It was also the story of early days of magazine writing and publishing. It was also a way to talk about Manhattan, where she wrote probably the best essay on the Central Park Five that we have.

So, instead of writing all of that, I give folks a frame and dates. What I did was I used quotes from Joan's own writing, juxtaposing that with a painting or a photograph, to show the ways in which this kind of visual world has a corollary, which is the verbal world. The text to me was as important as a photograph or a sculpture.

My job as a curator is to figure out ways to use what the artist is giving us in order to make a new atmosphere in a gallery or a museum.

What's next

LAist: Well, what's the next atmosphere that you want to create? What's next for you at The Huntington?

HA: I'm very much involved in understanding the enormous and vast archives that The Huntington has. I'm going through the archives. I've started to really think about the ways in which portraiture plays such a significant role in those archives. How can we connect their phenomenally great 18th and 19th century drawing, painting, and sculpture to contemporary practice?

About Thursday's event

Hilton Als will be in conversation with Huntington President Karen Lawrence on Thursday, Sept. 28 from 7 to 8 p.m. at The Huntington. 

• Location: Rothenberg Hall and livestreamed
• Address: 1151 Oxford Rd, San Marino

Free with reservation