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Five questions: FSU’s College of Fine Arts and The Ringling facilitate career-building experiences for students

By: Anna Prentiss, Jamie Rager   At The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota,…

FSU MoFA announces three thought-provoking exhibits for spring semester

Florida State University’s Museum of Fine Arts (MoFA) presents three exhibitions touching on themes of…

College Leadership Council premieres 2021 SIX Magazine

The College Leadership Council (CLC) was founded in 2010 to promote collaboration and communication between…

Five questions: FSU’s College of Fine Arts and The Ringling facilitate career-building experiences for students

By: Anna Prentiss, Jamie Rager

 

At The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida State University students can gain career-building experience working in a variety of museum departments such as archives, collections, development, education, library, and a performing arts theater.

Helping to facilitate these student experiences is The Ringling’s Associate Director of Academic Affairs and Collections, Jay Boda.

Since 2000, the museum has been governed by Florida State University, making it one of the largest university art museums in the nation. This connection gives FSU students access to the 66-acre campus, which boasts more than 200,000 square-feet of galleries featuring eclectic collections ranging from antiquity to contemporary.

Boda supervises academic programs at The Ringling and oversees its program team consisting of archives, collections, education and library departments. Programs like the Department of Art History’s Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies Master of Arts and the specialized program in Museum Education and Visitor-Centered Curation offer courses and internships at The Ringling.

“The Ringling is a major asset to our university and our students, and Dr. Boda himself is an incredible asset,” said Lorenzo Pericolo, chair of the Department of Art History. “His dedication to our Art Education and Art History students is unmatched.”

After 20 years of service in the United States Air Force, Boda retired as a Master Sergeant and followed his passion for education in museums. In 2011, he started his museum career as a volunteer docent at the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Boda answered questions about his life and work.


The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art’s Cà d’Zan is a Mediterranean revival residence in Sarasota, Florida, adjacent to Sarasota Bay.

What is your role as a faculty member at The Ringling?

On the academic affairs side, I oversee the programs related to higher education, such as internships and fellowships. Internships at The Ringling are connected to FSU’s art history and art education programs. On the collections side, I oversee the program team consisting of archives, collections, education, and library departments. While it’s easy to put your blinders on and stick to your lane, I try to help staff to think bigger and look at how we can maximize opportunities for a performance or an exhibition. We need to think about how to leverage our strengths across all departments to create the best experience for the visitor.

What unique perspectives do you believe you bring to the position?

I am a retired Air Force Master Sergeant — I served for 20 years, and I think that provides a specific perspective on collaboration, teamwork and seeing the bigger picture. I also think being in the military instilled in me a sense of public service. I have worked in different types of museums since I finished my education and I’m happiest working in a public capacity.

I started at The Ringling mid-pandemic when programming was more limited. Now, I’ve been trying to expand our audience. For example, I’m working with veteran groups and student-veteran groups. We want to show veterans what we can offer and that museums include them, too. It comes back to fostering empathy and understanding between our communities.

 

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota.


 

A gallery view in The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. (Photo by Ron Blunt)


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How has your doctoral research through FSU’s Museum Education and Visitor-Centered Curation Program prepared you for your advancement in museum development

My doctoral research was specific to contentiousness in art museums. Art can elicit a lot of reactions from people. Sometimes it creates a sense of awe, sometimes it challenges and provokes us to question our values. Anyone in a museum who wears a badge and interacts with visitors speaks on behalf of the museum. I was curious as to how these museum professionals contend with gray-area topics.

FSU’s Museum Education and Visitor Centered Curation Program prepared me for what I do today because I try to instill a sense of empathy for the visitor within students and interns. We want to foster relevance and personal meaning for people who come into museums.

How do the classes you teach at The Ringling relate to FSU’s main campus?

I teach two graduate-level classes for the Department of Art History supporting the Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies Program (MCHS). Every student who starts at the MCHS program completes the first year of their master’s at FSU’s main campus in Tallahassee. After that first year, students have the option to take The Ringling Course. Here, they do a two-semester in-residence internship at The Ringling and take two graduate courses with me—one is on exhibition-making, the other on public programs.

What advice would you give FSU interns and students you work with?

Many students come into the internships with previous classroom experience in the museum or cultural heritage sector, so I try to operationalize what they’ve learned. My advice for students seeking careers in museums is that they need to show how they can positively impact the organizations they apply to. I assign skill-building tasks they can then include on a resume to demonstrate how they positively impacted The Ringling. Those hard skills are what a lot of employers need from early career professionals.  

For more information, visit ringling.org.

FSU MoFA announces three thought-provoking exhibits for spring semester

BY: ANNA PRENTISS , GABRIELLE SANTEIRO

A series of modern portraits hang in a museum gallery.
Un sentimento di libertá | A Feeling of Freedom: New Italians in the Work of Luigi Christopher Veggetti Kanku

Florida State University’s Museum of Fine Arts (MoFA) presents three exhibitions touching on themes of identity, migration and media consumption.

“This season, MoFA will be providing new perspectives on a variety of subjects,” said Meredith Lynn, curator and interim director of MoFA. “We have worked with guest curators to bring in contemporary artists from across the globe who are deeply engaged with ideas our community cares about.”

Lynn said MoFA strives to respond to and provide context for conversations students and community members are having.

“We are also excited by the range of work — from films to sculpture to NFTs (non-fungible tokens) — that we will have on display this semester,” she said. “We are confident that every person who walks into the museum will connect with something.”

The museum is open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

All exhibits are free and open to the public and support MoFA’s mission to connect FSU and the broader community to the arts.


Text about a museum exhibit is diaplayed on a gallery wall, next to a projected image of a woman.
Cut Frames, Captured Pixels: Found Footage Film & Video

Cut Frames, Captured Pixels: Found Footage Film & Video

Jan. 12 – March 18

Cut Frames, Captured Pixels is the museum’s first all-moving-image exhibit and will showcase found footage — a filmmaking process where previously shot footage is remixed and cut together to create a new work.

“Each work asks its audience to critically question how its source material is produced, circulated and consumed, in addition to how we, collectively, find meaning in them,” said Dave Rodriguez, curator of the exhibit and digital services librarian at FSU. “I hope that the exhibit will expose MoFA visitors to thoughtful, funny, incisive and inspiring work that they might not have experienced otherwise.”

This exhibit will display a variety of artists and be divided into three phases: “Cinematic Surfaces,” “Video and its Discontents” and “Expanding Screens.”


An exhibit in a museum highlights portraits, which are well lit and hanging on white walls.
Un sentimento di libertá | A Feeling of Freedom: New Italians in the Work of Luigi Christopher Veggetti Kanku

Un sentimento di libertá | A Feeling of Freedom
New Italians in the Work of Luigi Christopher Veggetti Kanku

Jan. 19 – May 6

Un sentimento di libertá | A Feeling of Freedom celebrates the diversity of “new Italian” identities by displaying the expressionist art — including portraits and digital paintings — of Afro-Italian artist Luigi Christopher Veggetti Kanku.

“Historically, celebrations of Italian art have excluded Afro-Italian artists, and as a response to this, Veggetti Kanku has organized international exhibitions that display his digital artworks,” said Tenley Bick, guest curator and assistant professor of global postwar and contemporary art. “Conceived in relation to those exhibitions, the show at MoFA also includes the artist’s works on paper, some shown for the first time.”

This exhibition will showcase the importance of cultivating a sense of belonging and pride in one’s culture.

“These works shed light on the power of the visual to disrupt popular imaginaries around identity, race and place, and to create a feeling of freedom that can come with being at home in one’s own country,” Bick said. “Veggetti Kanku’s digital paintings provide an ‘Afro-Pop’ sensibility and a subversion of iconic examples of historical Italian modernist paintings.”


A series of artworks that include elements of passports. The first appear to be florets made of paper, the second features a portrait, the third is a small passport-like book.
(L to R) Pauline Galiana, “Portrait of Two Travelers,” 2022; Kelani Abass, “Connecting Continent 3,” 2013; Ahmad Hammoud, “Passport for the Stateless,” 2016.

Are We Free to Move About the World: The Passport in Contemporary Art

Feb. 2 – May 20

Curated by Grace Aneiza Ali, curator and assistant professor in the Departments of Art and Art History, this exhibit contends with artists’ perceptions of the passport as a response to the global migration crisis. “Are We Free to Move About the World” dives deep into the concept of the passport and how it can both enhance and restrict people’s freedom of movement.

“This gathering of global artists examines the great paradox of the passport — its ability to grant freedom of movement as well as curtail it,” Aneiza Ali said. “And it’s an invitation for all of us to ponder a world ordered by the passport and how we negotiate our place in it.”