Dear readers, contributors, and idea generators,
Welcome to Exhibitions on the Cusp! This year-long platform celebrates and explores curators, creators, and connected communities. The Cusp is curious about the evolving, intersecting, and blurring roles in the advancement of contemporary art. It is also eager to understand the position of curators in our cultural and community landscapes.
Exhibitions on the Cusp stems from the 20th anniversary of the Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award. To date, the Award has enabled 25 curators from across the country to bring to life unconventional aesthetics and to challenge historical, cultural and social frameworks. These aspirations were hallmarks of the Tremaine Collection, which was one of the premier collections of 20th century contemporary art. It was through art auctions in the 1980s that most of the collection was sold to endow the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation. In fact, the title of the Cusp is a tribute to Emily Hall Tremaine via her biography, Collector on the Cusp.
Each edition of Exhibitions on the Cusp will draw inspiration and themes from the 20-year archive of the Exhibition Award, engage winning curators to reflect on exhibition subject matter and career development, and propel conversations on critical ideas of our time. In Collector on the Cusp, it is said that “Emily Hall Tremaine attempted to follow Piet Mondrian’s aphorism, ‘If we cannot free ourselves, we can free our vision.’” Every month, Exhibitions on the Cusp will invite your vision and your voice, including your ideas on professional development supports for rising curators that may influence the future direction of the Exhibition Award.
The “original eye” of Emily Hall Tremaine and her husband, Burton G. Tremaine, Sr., led them to purchase pieces such as Jasper Johns’ Three Flags while it was still on his easel. We hope that Exhibitions on the Cusp inspires similar adventure, perception, and discovery. You are part of its creation and we look forward to your insights.
With the creative energy of seven branches of family members behind the Tremaine Foundation and gratitude to arts and culture bearers everywhere and in every form –
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