Meet Brian Sholis: New curator focused on photos

Brian Sholis is excited to share what he's been working on.

So much so that he'll be waiting for you in the lobby of the Cincinnati Art Museum on Sunday afternoon, about 1:30 to 5 p.m., to say hello, and then probably point you to the museum's new gallery of photographs on the second floor.

Really.

Sholis, associate curator for photography, has snagged Gallery 212 for a revolving showcase of photographs from the museum's permanent collection. It might be the first time the museum has ever had a regular gallery devoted to photos.

The gallery theme for the next three months is "Portraits of the Artist," portraits by famous photographers of famous subjects. Miles Davis, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Marceau, John Cage and probably his favorite, dancer Merce Cunningham. Photographers include Richard Avedon, Lee Friedlander, Robert Capa and Barbara Morgan.

The project is helping him get to know getting to know the museum's approximately 4,000 image collection, its strengths and weaknesses. Five months into the job, Sholis already has acquired several new works to begin to help fill in some gaps in the collection.

In June, Sholis will launch a public art project on billboards around the city called "Big Pictures," with a series of 25 feet by 10 feet photos shot just for the project. New works will be revealed in new locations every six weeks, and a related website will contain information about the project and artists. Sholis' goal: To take photography off museum walls.

A new lecture series he's created with the Fine Arts Department at University of Cincinnati's DAAP beginning in April also will take the bigger conversation about photography out of the museum.

In October, his first big exhibition will feature contemporary lens-based art, timed to be part of FotoFocus 2014. The exhibition of international renowned artists called "Eyes on the Street" will embrace a more expansive view of cities – and also what the camera can do.

A non-traditional path to museum job

Museum director Aaron Betsky, who recruited Sholis to his first museum job, believes Sholis the right choice to help the entire community begin to think about photography differently.

"Photography is being redefined as we speak. It's not just snapping a shot and going to the darkroom," Betsky says. "Brian is interested in helping us navigate the new world of photography."

Though Sholis didn't expect to be working in a museum, at least at this point in his career, there are other ways in which it makes complete sense.

Sholis has a master's degree in American history, and was considering pursuing a doctorate, and probably would have written his thesis on the point at which American museums began to consider photography as art. Sholis has been mostly a writer, editor and critic, with a little curation thrown in. More often than not, he was the guy making sense of an exhibit after the fact.

When Betsky called, Sholis was working an as editor at Aperture Foundation – "the gold standard for photography publications," says Thomas Schiff, the businessman and photographer behind FotoFocus.

Betsky is counting on Sholis bringing people together to peer into the future, helping make Cincinnati a center of photography. At the same time, Sholis, who has a master's degree in American history, also appears to have a an encyclopedic knowledge of photography's history.

Starting with a 25-page list of the museum's photographic holdings, he was able to identify that it had a hole in its collection of modernist American photography, a period from the late '20s to early '40s. The museum has images from only 13 of 20 key photographers from the period. Sholis has his eyes set on acquiring works from those seven photographers.

"He's very knowledgeable about the facts and dates and numbers that curators are good at," Schiff says. Schiff and Sholis meet for lunch once or twice a month.

And that's what else Sholis has done. He's talked to people. A lot of people.

He breathed new life into the museum's Friends of Photography group by lowering the price point and talking it up. He's visited local photographers in their studios, making a big impression.

"I've had a good time meeting as many people who are as willing to meet with me," Sholis says. "I've asked them to keep their minds open to ways we can collaborate."

How to embrace Cincinnati

Sholis has embraced Cincinnati in ways that natives could take a lesson from. Though he grew up in Chicago, he has great memories of time spent in Louisville, home of his father's family.

Cincinnati, he says, has a wonderful blend of northern culture meets southern culture, which makes it unique in the Midwest.

"There's a tradition of corporate and individual philanthropy that has supported very strong arts organizations," Sholis says. "And in New York, I feel almost like I had blinders on. I could only do visual art. There's so many galleries in Chelsea to see, etc."

He's connected quickly with much of the visual arts community. But he's also been to been to readings at UC's English Department, the ballet, the symphony, among other things.

He'll happily tell you about discovering the Mercantile Library and Jungle Jim's International Market. He's especially fond of the Ohio Book Store, and can tell you that you can see a lovely collection of old glass negatives if you just ask.

"I'm discovering how to be the kind of Renaissance man that I always wanted to be in New York but never had the time to be," Sholis says.

Does he miss anything about New York? Well, yes, and it's clear he misses her a lot.

His wife, painter and sculptor Julia Dault, had a studio here after Sholis first arrived, but found she needed to be working in New York while doing three solo shows this year.

Serious art scholar – and entertaining guy

The wall text in the Sholis' new gallery exhibit says this: "All portraits are collaborations between the person behind the lens and the person or people in front of it."

Not entirely aware that he's making his own point, Sholis asks Enquirer photographer Jeff Swinger, making Sholis' portrait for this story, if he should pose as serious-art-scholar-guy or fun-entertaining-extroverted-guy.

Sholis is both. It's that combination that fills the room with so much possibility.

If you get a chance to meet Sholis at the museum today, make sure to catch him on the way out. He will want to know what you think.

Really.

About Brian Sholis

Age: 34

Hometown: Chicago.

Education: B.A. Boston University, M.A. in American History from City University of New York.

Family: His wife is New York-based painter and sculptor Julia Dault.

Responsibilities: As associate curator of photography, Sholis is responsible for the care, study, and interpretation of the Cincinnati Art Museum's photography collection, as well as choosing new photographs to add to it and helping the art museum reach new audiences.

Previous job: His resumé includes a stint as editor at Artforum. Just before he came to Cincinnati, he worked as an editor at the influential Aperture Foundation – founded by a group of prominent photographers, including Ansel Adams, in the early '50s.

About CAM's photo collection

• The Cincinnati Art Museum began acquiring photographs in late 19th century, about 15 years after it opened.
• There are about 4,000 images in the collection.
• On Brian Sholis' recommendation, the museum this month acquired a 1956 portrait of an African-American man in church by Ohio-born James Karales (1930-2002), a Look Magazine photographer known for documenting the Civil Rights era. Sholis also hopes to grow the collection in several areas, including modernist American images from the 1920s and '30s.

Now in Gallery 212

"Portraits of the Artist" is the first of what will become a quarterly rotation of images from the Cincinnati Art Museum's permanent collection of photography.

No one remembers – or has documented – that the museum ever had a gallery dedicated to the museum's collection of photographs. Works on paper can only be displayed for short periods.

The 14-image exhibit features photos from its collection of artist portraits, including jazz trumpet great Miles Davis by Lee Friedlander, dancer Merce Cunningham by Barbara Morgan and artist Pablo Picasso with his son by Robert Capa.

In his words

"Photography is both a window onto the world and an art with its own history and traditions. One of the curator's chief tasks is to tell stories through art – about the world, about the development of art itself.

"It's exciting to be able to draw on the Cincinnati Art Museum's collection, to work in its galleries and to delve into its long history to tell stories about photography in this time of great transition.

"New technologies are causing artists to rethink what a photograph is. And they allow us all to be photographers. I want to think about and share these remarkable developments, and, by highlighting artistic achievements both past and present, suggest contexts for understanding them."

– Brian Sholis

CAM's FotoFocus exhibit

Brian Sholis' first major exhibition at the museum will be part of FotoFocus 2014. It debuts in October, exactly a year after his arrival, a quick turnaround in museum time.

The exhibition – Eyes on the Street – is a collection of works by 10 internationally renowned artists who create photographs, film and videos that redefine street photography.

"By emphasizing the role cameras' technical capabilities play in making these artworks, I hope to broaden our understanding of the genre," Sholis says.