Smoke and Mirrors

The Artists Working in Exhibitions

Anyone who has mounted a successful and visually stunning exhibition will agree that this process demands an enormous amount of work. Most creative productions-dance, theater, music, and art-have behind-the-scenes activities crucial to the success of the event. At the Richmond Center for Visual Arts, these unseen activities are performed by your peers-students from the Frostic School of Art.

Gallery staff assistants are a critical component of the Exhibitions department. The students featured here have played an indispensable role in mounting the exhibitions in the adjacent galleries this fall, adapting skills they learn here and applying those in their own practice, their work, exhibitions, and other creative endeavors.

Texture Experiments

2021 Ceramics

Working in the galleries has taught me how to handle artwork carefully and professionally. I have gained the skills to confidently install an exhibition. I have worked directly with artists to help them install and also installed work without meeting the artist. The most exciting part is finishing the installation and seeing it for the first time. When it is time to deinstall an exhibition, it is our job to turn the gallery back into a perfect blank canvas for the next show. Everything done in the galleries must be done very precisely, including hanging works or patching and painting the walls. The small details and flaws around the gallery have become more visible to me and easier to fix. Working in the galleries has prepared me to work in the professional world of art as both an artist and a gallery employee. I have met some of my favorite people at the gallery. We are all hard-working and focused which makes me proud every time we open an exhibition.