Alaina Claire Feldman, the inaugural chief curator at the U.C. Irvine Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art (Langson IMCA) starting January 6, 2025. Photo by Isabel Asha Penzlien.
December 18, 2024
By Laurie Hanson
UC Irvine Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art (Langson IMCA) announced In October the appointment of Alaina Claire Feldman as its inaugural chief curator, effective January 6, 2025. She will support Langson IMCA’s curatorial vision and the design and development of its exhibition and collection strategies. Ms. Feldman took time out of her busy schedule to answer Los Cerritos Community News questions about the journey that brought her to Langson and asked to share her vision of the future of Langson.
Feldman holds an M.A. from the Graduate Center at CUNY and a B.A. from Pratt Institute in New York. She is an adjunct professor in the Fine and Performing Arts department at Baruch College and CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College.
Feldman has more than 15 years of curating exhibitions worldwide. During her tenure, she heightened Mishkin Gallery’s profile by touring presentations of its collection while building partnerships with art and academic institutions across New York and Zurich, São Paulo, Porto, San Juan, and Tbilisi.
Mishkin Gallery is a university art museum affiliated with the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College, City University of New York in New York City.
“I am excited to join the very talented staff at Langson IMCA and to collaborate with the brilliant faculty and students at UC Irvine,” Feldman told LCCN. “Langson IMCA is the perfect place to activate interdisciplinary work by bringing together artists, scholars, and the greater community. I plan to continue the campus’ rich legacy of fostering experimental artist-driven programs as a catalyst for new inquiry and creativity.”
The first thing that drew Feldman to Langson IMCA is its location within one of the country’s top research universities.
“When I looked at the school’s departments and institutes, I began to imagine how art could play a role in engaging this research,” she said. “I also thought about how exhibitions and public programs could offer the public a window into this scholarship.”
With degrees in both Art History/Visual Studies and Social and Environmental Justice Studies, her record of exhibition-making has focused not only on formalist qualities of art but also on artists with broad historical, conceptual, and theoretical interests.
“Several recent projects of mine have focused on the long duration of environmental issues vis-à-vis visual culture and visual technologies,” she explained. “Langson IMCA’s collection of California landscape paintings provides a rich visual record over more than a century and could be paired with, say, recent environmental impacts studies and current efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change in the state. These kinds of programs would be a way to draw in faculty, students, and the public from a wide cross range of expertise.”
Feldman looks forward to attending the many programs, panels, and lectures on the UCI campus and meeting some of the brilliant faculty and students at UC Irvine.
“These relationships take time,” said Feldman, “but I plan to mobilize the exciting energy across disciplines and work with artists and thinkers who want to create synergies and new ideas across fields. That’s really the future: thinking broadly and creating new complex lenses of analysis.”
“I want people to know that Langson IMCA is an agile partner that works across fields and is a welcoming space that surprises and inspires,” Feldman explained. “This means investing in an equitable and accessible art space.”
In the 2019 publication Accessibility in the Arts: A Promise and A Practice, artist Carolyn Lazard suggests museums ask, “Who comes to our events? Why do those people come to our events? Who doesn’t come to our events? Why do those people not come to our events?” According to Feldman, noting who is not there and why is just as important as noting who is.
“Many young people first engage with museums and art through their phones and devices, so it’s important to meet them where they are and encourage them to step into the gallery,” she said.
“By adding more digital programs, it would help expand audiences across the region and beyond,” she added. “I’m excited to continue to build off some of the programs I initiated while at CUNY, like developing audio guides, digital publications, and an archive of recorded videos that can be accessed anywhere and anytime.”
With so much work in curating often left unseen or unsaid and without overprescribing artists’ intentions, Feldman is excited to think about publications or analogous forms that will expand upon the deep research that goes into exhibition-making.
“For example, I’m inspired by the critical didactics and publication that Catherine Lord and Charles Gaines made for the 1993 UC Irvine exhibition The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism,” she explained. “This exhibition positioned work by Black artists next to previously published press reviews of their work, marking a contrast between what artists were trying to do and how the art world perceived them.”
“In his essay for the publication, Gaines expands his academic and theoretical ideas to offer a way out of mainstream identity politics of the time,” Feldman added. “Having places within and beyond the gallery that foster and support critical scholarship is something I think has and will continue to set UC Irvine and Langson IMCA apart.”
By not just being interested in art in the world, Feldman is more focused on the art of the world that reflects the context of where, when, and how it’s made and presented.
“I’ve been very lucky to travel and meet inspiring artists and curators from around the world and to build on those relationships over many years in mutually beneficial ways,” she explained. “This experience has made me more sensitive to people with different backgrounds and has taught me to be a better listener.”
Feldman’s interests in curating and academics started while working as a director of exhibitions at a non-profit, Independent Curators International (ICI). There, she often traveled across the country to produce and install exhibitions, most of which were at university museums. Speaking to young people and hearing their excitement about art was a key experience for her.
“Very often across America, university art museums are the only local place to see art,” she explained. “I realized how important universities can be in building community and new ideas around culture.”
Feldman advises future budding curators always to stay curious, ask questions, and see exhibitions whenever possible by being in such a vibrant cultural region [it] offers so many wonderful ways to encounter art.”
Feldman was first inspired to enter art curating by Constance Lewallen from the University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
“Connie was central in the California art scene,” Feldman explained. “She gave many California conceptualists their first shows in the 60s and 70s and supported them through their careers.”
“She was dedicated to scholarship, research, and the next generation of curators, especially women,” she added. “I was lucky to work closely with her on many exhibitions and publications over the years and to investigate ideas alongside her. Connie introduced me to University of California art museums and the humble but powerful influence that curators can yield.”
Feldman’s words of wisdom for those up and coming in the arts are that the more art one experiences, the more one will understand art history and the present landscape.
“Go to openings of artists you find interesting and try to speak with people,” she said. “The art world is very social.”
About UC Irvine Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art
UC Irvine Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art (Langson IMCA) is home to two foundational gifts of California Art from The Irvine Museum and Gerald E. Buck estate. In addition, the permanent collection of more than 4,700 works from the late 19th century and early 20th century through present day continues to grow, augmented by acquisitions and gifts. The university is planning to construct a permanent museum and research institute to serve as a global magnet for the presentation and study of California Art within its social, historical, environmental, and cultural frameworks. Langson IMCA is currently located in an interim museum space at 18881 Von Karman Avenue, Suite 100, in Irvine. It is open to all Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission and parking are free. For more information, please visit online at imca.uci.edu. Follow them on Instagram @langsonimca.
