After accumulating eleven years of art curation experience with various NYC galleries, Director Sarah Watson began her chapter with CU Denver by gearing up behind the scenes for Performance Art Week. Within her first three months, she has been, reportedly, meeting an entire network of people, “listening, learning and getting a grounding of what’s at play.” Watson is currently looking at how exhibition accessibility can be extended while exploring new ways to interact with campus-goers. From making art to curating it, Watson’s path led her to Auraria Campus, now as the director and curator guiding the CU Denver Emmanuel Art and Experience Galleries. Currently, Watson is compiling a list of all the different artist-run galleries, commercial galleries and museums, from “the biggest art institutions in Denver to the in-someone’s-living-room art community spaces.” 

Creating art was a formative piece of Watson’s childhood: She shared in an interview how her mom and herself would host art camps at their home for neighborhood kids in the summer. Growing up outside of Philadelphia, Watson had opportunities to frequent the Philadelphia Art Museum, the Fabric Workshop and Museum, and the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania—sometimes all in one day.  

“As a teenager,” she reminisced fondly, “I would take the train into Philly and go to punk rock shows and then go to art museums.” 

As a first-generation college student, Watson worked throughout her undergraduate and graduate careers. She recalled agreeing to unexpected opportunities: From a museum gift shop cashier to an internship with a private art collector, Watson remarked that “the wandering path can be really rewarding—you can learn a lot from it.”  

“Going to art school was such a freeing time to think about what it means to be an autonomous person,” Watson stated. Workshop critiques and a minor in religion inspired her artistic work and future curating career. Specifically, the organization of putting art pieces together to present to an audience and discussing with artists the desired effects that drew Watson to a career in curation. 

She shared, “I never thought I was going to be a curator for a private collector or be going to, you know, auctions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s and bidding on artwork.” Ultimately, it was towards the end of her time spent studying for her master’s when she knew she wanted to curate within a nonprofit, or public-sector space. 

Watson spent eleven years curating galleries for Hunter College—one of twenty-six public colleges within the City University of New York system—which provides a well known MFA Studio Art program and Art History Master’s program. One extensive project Watson organized at Hunter College was curator Bridget R. Cook’s the Black Index, described as “an exhibition project that ended up moving in many different ways and becoming much more collaborative than originally anticipated” and “a project that needs to be seen by the world.” Watson met Cook in 2018 at her presentation on how “2D drawing reclaims the image of Blackness and the oversaturation of Blackness in media images.” 

The exhibition was anticipated to open late 2020 but was halted due to the pandemic and subsequent funding gaps. However, “slowed down by the pandemic, now able to ensure the safety of the show,” the team was able to expand the exhibition beyond Hunter College, into universities and art centers in California and Texas. It opened without an audience in January of 2021, then closed at Hunter College’s gallery two years later. 

Working between multiple spaces is nothing new for Watson as she becomes acquainted with the Emmanuel Art Gallery and Experience Gallery. Two spaces she once had to work between, she shared, were forty minutes apart by NYC subway: This reportedly posed no challenge to either exhibition’s independent conceptual development. 

“[The Emmanuel Art Gallery] is such a special place,” Watson commented, “It just feels so homey and welcoming: Every single time I’ve come in since I’ve started working, I find it to just have this really nice energy to it.” When she curates a space, Watson first considers the audiences’ differences: What makes each space unique, and how can it serve the exhibitions there? For non-CAM students, or those unfamiliar, the Experience Gallery is a smaller space than Emmanuel and resides in the Performing Arts District. 

For those who see themselves as a future curator or in another artistic specialization, she would share this advice: “Believe in your own agency. When I say ‘believe in yourself,’ it’s like, don’t let someone else’s assumptions be a categorization [of your] identity. Everyone belongs in the art world who wants to be in it.” Emmanuel Art Gallery’s Summer exhibition will celebrate 150 years of the gallery’s history, so be sure to attend its opening reception on June 18th to engage with Watson and her work.