ART, HEALING, & Slowing Down

SIDDHARTHA V. SHAH has been promoting art as a means of community engagement and social responsibility throughout his professional career. Recently he took up the role of Director of the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Massachusetts, and talks with VANESSA PATEL about how he is expanding his vision in this new college environment.

- VANESSA PATEL

Q: Hello Siddhartha, thanks for your time. Since last we met, you've moved to the Mead at Amherst. It's a different profile of people, right?

Totally different. At Amherst College, the students are incredibly smart and talented. They can really think critically about art in a different way, and you can take more risks because college is about engaging with difficult conversations.

Q: So how are you taking forward the community engagement that was so central to your last position at the Peabody Essex Museum?

That will be a major part of what I do. The challenge is how to make the arts more available to people and democratize art museums. But the museum is in the middle of a college campus, so, if the community has a hard time accessing it, if they can't park, if they don't feel like what's on campus is really for them, we're limited. I'm hoping to advocate for the museum to move closer to town, to show that we are balancing the commitment to the educational mission and the civic responsibility of the college. This is a long-term plan as we want more people from the community to feel welcome. We want the general public to feel quite comfortable wandering in.

Q: Are there specific projects that you are working on here? 

We are working on a public engagement project, an exhibition around American Studies and the idea of democracy, as well as the college being a place to develop the civic leaders of the future.

I started thinking about Puerto Rico, which is essentially an American colony. The situation of Puerto Rico really brings into question whether the United States is a democracy, and whether our identity really is about freedom.