Curator Chat

We Ask Leading Museum Curators About What’s Going On In Their World

Elisa Germán
Lunder Curator of Works on Paper and Whistler Studies
Colby College Museum of Art
5600 Mayflower Hill Drive, Waterville, ME 04901, museum.colby.edu

What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why?
I’m hoping to spend some time outdoors this summer exploring sites connected to the Dia Beacon and Storm King in New York, but I am especially looking forward to Willem de Kooning at Work, organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Rijksmuseum. Any chance to engage closely with an artist’s drawings is a privilege, especially since works on paper are rarely exhibited for long. It will be exciting to see how de Kooning’s work as a draftsman informed his broader artistic practice.

What are you reading?
I was grateful to receive a gift card to a bookstore recently—it gave me the chance to pick up something purely out of curiosity. As a former Bostonian, I was very happy to find a new cookbook, America’s Test Kitchen: Dinner Tonight, which has already proven to be both practical and delicious. I also picked up Language as Liberation: Reflections on the American Canon by Toni Morrison, whose books have stayed with me through every stage of my life.

What is an interesting exhibit, gallery opening or work of art you’ve seen recently?
Although there are so many great exhibitions on view recently, the one that has continued to resonate is Hew Locke: what have we here? at the British Museum which I saw in fall 2024. I recently had the honor of meeting the artist and it crystallized how the exhibition was shaped by his endless spirit of criticality, openness and creativity, informing every aspect of the presentation—from the selection of works to the design and interpretive strategies. It has continually inspired me to rethink elements of my own curatorial approach.

What are you researching at the moment?
At the moment, my research is focused on an exhibition opening this fall at the Colby College Museum of Art: The Sun Never Sets: Photographs and Prints of Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico from the Hispanic Society Museum and Library. The title, which alludes to the 16th-century phrase “el imperio donde nunca se pone el sol” (the empire where the sun never sets), reflects on Spain’s waning imperial presence in the decades leading up to the Spanish American War. The project was inspired by a major exhibition and publication organized by my colleague Jessamine Batario for the Colby Museum, Imagining an Archipelago: Art from Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and their Diasporas (July 2026–June 2027), which introduces new scholarship on the modern and contemporary artistic legacies of these island nations, and features newly commissioned work by leading contemporary artists.

What is your dream exhibit to curate? Or see someone else curate?
I have always dreamed of curating an exhibition that explores paper, not just as a support, but as a medium of its own making with unique cultural, historical and conceptual possibilities. At the same time, I try to embrace the opportunities that arise in the present and I feel incredibly fortunate to be in the early stages of conceiving an exhibition on Richard Serra for the Colby Museum, highlighting his prolific legacy as both a printmaker and sculptor—a project that I never imagined I would have the chance to realize. —