Is there a mentoring system to groom the latest Biennial curators?
HH: You could say that, in the sense that the Whitney is very good at promoting people up through the ranks. I started as an intern eight years ago, and Shamim used to be a curatorial assistant and has been here 12 years. How you hang the show, and how you relate one artist’s work to another’s, must be one of the most challenging parts of your jobs. SMM: The floor plan is one of the most exciting things. It’s how you shape what viewers will see and encourage connections that they might not otherwise make. But it’s particularly challenging in this show for two reasons. First, the Whitney has very few permanent walls, so you start from scratch every time. Second, a lot of the work is project-based: At the outset, many artists didn’t have a concrete sense of exactly how much space they needed. Their projects evolved, and every time they shifted in concept and execution they changed what was needed for the space, and potentially everything else in the show. It was extremely challenging, bu
