Aimee Ng
AFTER GUEST-CURATING the 2014 exhibition “The Poetry of Parmigianino’s ‘Schiava Turca,’” Italian Renaissance scholar Aimee Ng joined New York’s Frick Collection as a full-time curator in 2015. Since then, her exhibitions have included “Moroni: The Riches of Renaissance Portraiture” in 2019 and (with Antwaun Sargent) “Barkley L. Hendricks: Portraits at the Frick” in 2023. A fixture of the museum’s popular weekly video series “Cocktails with a Curator”—which invited online audiences to experience the Frick’s collection virtually during the Covid-19 lockdown, and was anthologized as a book in 2022—Ng more recently appeared in its “Renovation Stories,” highlighting the changes that visitors can expect when the Frick reopens on April 17.
HOW WOULD YOU DEFINE CURATING?
It took me time to accept that curating can mean vastly different things for different institutions, genres of art, and people. When I was younger and didn’t know better—having struggled through my doctorate and trying to get one of the few curatorial jobs in my field—I used to get indignant about seeing the word curated being thrown around to apply to menus, playlists, experiences, etc. Then I did a program that brought me together with curators from all sorts of museums around the country, and we all had entirely different jobs. Now I know better. Live and let curate. For me, curating is simply taking care of art in the fullest sense, including connecting people with its stories.
WHAT WAS THE LAST SHOW YOU TRAVELED TO SEE?
“Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome”at the National Gallery in London marked the appearance of a giant sixteenth-century Italian altarpiece from a decade of treatment in the conservation studio, its return to public view. I remember when it first went in. The world was a different place. The show coincided with two exhibitions in London, at the King’s Gallery and the Royal Academy of Art, both also featuring sixteenth-century drawings. Because of paper’s light sensitivity, once these fragile sheets are displayed for a few months, they have to go back to rest in dark boxes for years. When so many rarely seen works come out on view together like this, it feels once in a lifetime, like a mega cicada brood emerging from the earth.
WHAT UPCOMING EXHIBITION (BESIDES YOURS) ARE YOU MOST EXCITED ABOUT?
“Alison Watt: From Light,” at London’s Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery. Watt’s work is so quiet, understated, yet powerful; it feels like a respite from all the shouting. She is a rare painter with technical brilliance who provokes both close looking and deep thinking. Hers are the kinds of paintings that you want to stick your face into, holding your breath as your eyes drink it all in.
WHAT IS ONE SHOW THAT HAD A BIG INFLUENCE ON YOU?
“Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s”at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2006–2007, curated by Sabine Rewald. Tightly focused, masterfully selected, and bone-chilling in its ability to bring to life stories of German culture and society through portraits made between the two World Wars without heavy-handed didactics telling visitors what to think. And it had a killer title.
WHAT IS THE BEST PIECE OF CRITICISM YOU’VE READ RECENTLY?
There is so much good and a lot of not-so-good. I’ve been reading early British art reviews from the 1770s, when the Royal Academy first started putting on contemporary art shows—some critics were just brutal. Much of it was published anonymously, foreshadowing online trolling today. I’m always intrigued by criticism of criticism, like Andrea Long Chu’s recent piece in New York Magazine on columnist Pamela Paul’s departure from the New York Times, because it pays attention to critics themselves, their positions and perspectives, biases and identities.
IS THERE A PARTICULAR IDEA THAT IS INSPIRING YOUR WORK NOW?
How language evolves, and how certain people shape it. I’m reading about Samuel Johnson’s writing of the Dictionary of the English Language (first published 1755)—for centuries the authority until it was superseded by the Oxford English Dictionary and Webster’s. Henry Hitchings’s book Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary (2005) draws attention to how Johnson’s life and beliefs informed how he defined words. The idea startles: One person’s autobiography can shape a dictionary that affects the ways in which a language is used by the world.
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE MOST IMPORTANT CONVERSATION HAPPENING NOW WITHIN THE CURATORIAL FIELD OR IN THE ARTS MORE BROADLY?
How we can continue doing meaningful museum work while maintaining the highest standards of ethics, excellence, and safety, while the planet is burning.
WHAT DO YOU WISH PEOPLE BETTER UNDERSTOOD ABOUT CURATING?
An exhibition is not a wish list, especially when working with centuries-old objects. Behind our exhibitions are years of diplomacy, negotiation, and trust-building, convincing owners of irreplaceable works of art to put them on planes and trucks to travel across continents and oceans at enormous cost. Some objects cannot travel because the risk is too great. So when we hear “They should’ve gotten that Vermeer,” or whatever, I would want people to know that it is almost miraculous that these shows happen at all.
WHAT PIECE OF ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO AN ASPIRING CURATOR?
Know your stuff and be kind.
WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING A CURATOR CAN DO FOR AN ARTIST?
Keep a check on egos. And there are so many egos. It’s not anyone’s fault; it’s human nature. But the point is the art; the curator’s job is to protect that.
