The process of setting up a new exhibition
Curating at the Meydenbauer Center: A Conversation Between Art and Space
by Tamar Alsberg
Artist Kevin Cosley overseeing the new instillation
When I first began curating exhibitions at the Meydenbauer Center, I quickly realized that every exhibition is not just about hanging art on walls, it’s about listening. Listening to the space, to the light, to the rhythm of how people move through it. Each artwork carries its own pulse, but it finds its truest life only when it meets its surroundings, when architecture, materials, and human movement begin to converse with it.
The Meydenbauer is a living environment, full of glass reflections, tall ceilings, textured surfaces, and the quiet hum of people passing through on their way to something else. In such a space, curating becomes almost like composing music. You must sense where the first note should be played, where people’s eyes naturally land as they enter, where they slow down, where light lingers longest during the day. These become the places where the artworks can speak the loudest, or whisper the most tenderly.
Every exhibition begins with the challenge of adaptation. Sometimes we can’t drill into a wall, or the ceiling is too high for a simple hanging. But these are not obstacles, they’re invitations to invent. A limitation becomes an opportunity to see the work differently, to allow it to inhabit space in a new and surprising way.
Light, too, is a collaborator and a trickster. Natural light changes throughout the day; artificial light has its own moods. A painting that glows in the morning may deepen by afternoon. A sculpture may catch a fleeting reflection from a nearby window, transforming moment to moment. I’ve learned to let the light be part of the story not something to control entirely, but to dance with.
Instillation team setting up and Brock Scott our photographer following artist Kevin Cosley
And perhaps most beautifully, the artworks themselves have a kind of life that extends beyond their frames. When they are placed thoughtfully within a space, they begin to breathe with it. They reflect the floors, absorb the colors of the walls, converse with the plants, or echo the movement of people rushing by. In these moments, the art becomes part of the living architecture not an object on display, but a presence among presences.
Curating at the Meydenbauer has taught me that every exhibition is a living dialogue between art and place, between vision and limitation, and between stillness and movement. It’s about creating a journey for the visitor, where each artwork is not simply seen but experienced in its light, its context, and its quiet conversation with everything around it.
‘Blue Morphos’ hanging at Meydenbauer theatre
The invisible string that connects between the artwork, creates a story in chapters- in time.
When art, space, and life align, something almost magical happens: the boundaries dissolve, and the exhibition becomes not just a collection of works but a breathing, resonant environment.
