Part II of Meet Team HMA! Kristina Anthony, Exhibitions Manager
Kristina hanging Steve McCurry’s Afghan Girl. Photo by Robert Reed.
I thought it would be fun to summarize my years of working on exhibitions at Hickory Museum of Art. In doing so the song “Seasons of Love“ (aka 525,600 Minutes) from RENT kept playing in my head. So as Kai Ryssdal would say, “Let’s do the numbers.”
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12+ years involved with exhibitions at HMA
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11 years as Exhibitions Manager (7 as Exhibitions + Communications Manager)
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219 different exhibitions installed
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14,352 vinyl letters adhered to (and peeled off) the wall
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5,994 artworks (paintings / photographs / prints / sculptures) that I’ve had the privilege of touching and installing
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3 exhibitions brought to life in tableaux vivants
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37 times riding the lift before getting over my fear of heights
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60,124 coffee stirrers teamHMA and I have picked up from the gallery floor (thanks Jonathan Brilliant!), and while we are at it:
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9 coats of paint to cover up his coffee grounds paintings
Installation artist Jonathan Brilliant working on coffee ground paintings for HICKORY STICKS
Clarissa and Kristina play with a model of the Coe Gallery discussing an upcoming exhibition
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101 living artists (not including group shows) I have worked / collaborated / interacted with
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84 gallons of paint
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24 pints of spackle
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2,444 cups of coffee
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104 times water/coffee has gone up my nose from laughing in staff/exhibitions meetings
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19 warnings I’ve had to give that flames of any kind are prohibited in the Museum (mostly sternos/candles, but once burning sage leaves)
Kristina’s puts the ‘happy little final touches’ on the HMA Members Exhibition.
Some of my favorite moments working at HMA (in no particular order):
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Dressing up as Bob Ross.
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Being 9 months pregnant crawling around on the floor putting finishing touches on a woodworking exhibition, and fighting the urge to climb a ladder to help a high school student hang his work.
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Leaving work for an OB appointment saying “I’ll be back in an hour…” Then calling work an hour later from a hospital bed, frantically giving instructions to my co-workers for events taking place that weekend. And Mary assuring me, “Kristina, we’ve got this. Just concentrate on having that baby.”
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Crawling inside a 29’ long inflatable Buddha sculpture to adjust 2x4’s and sandbags during BLOW UP.
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Saying goodbye to our old lighting system which involved lighting everything from 25’ high ceiling with 15 pound fixtures with sketchy wiring.
Kristina and Matt Diffee, cartoon artist for The New Yorker, finalize his exhibition. Photo © Jason Overby.
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Getting installation ideas from artists -- such as Matthew Diffee’s awesome suggestion of writing directly on gallery walls with washable markers. (This was after I let Hootie Bowman loose with permanent markers.)
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Organizing tableaux vivants for Hickory Selects (2007), Imagination of Henryk Fantazos (2009), and Faces & Figures (2014). My favorite tableaux were of Fantazos’ Okra Smugglers and Blood for Toys (which featured my husband), Ed Crump as Fred Gorham Folsom III’s So I Sez I Sez…, and HMA’s own Clarissa and Mary in Jane Peterson’s The Windowseat.
Tableaux vivant of Henryk Fantazos’ Blood for Toys (Kristina’s husband Craig is the actor on the left — one of the many jobs he’s been roped into over the years)
