By Linda J.P. Mahdesian
Like most kids growing up in suburban America in the 1950s, Jo-Ann Conklin read Life magazine on a regular basis. This Connecticut native dreamed of being a photographer and having her photos in Life. While in college at the University of Connecticut-Torrington, she earned a commercial photography certificate and went to Washington's Corcoran School of Art for a photography workshop. She traveled to England's Derby Lonsdale College of Art and Technology to study photography and film theory, then got a B.F.A. in photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Somewhere between England and graduate school at the University of Iowa's School of Art and Art History where she earned her master's degree in art history, Conklin traded her dream of becoming a world-famous photographer into becoming a scholar of other artists' work. "When I went to England and did film theory, photo theory - early semiotics - I wanted to look at other people's art instead of making my own. I was fascinated by it."
As of July 1, this photography historian will take the helm of the David Winton Bell Gallery, replacing the outgoing director, Diana Johnson. Conklin's strength in photography is a good match for the Bell Gallery, according to Johnson: "We're getting known for our photography shows ... there aren't many shows of that kind at other institutions."
But don't pigeonhole Conklin as only an expert in photography, says Wendy Edwards, professor of visual art and member of the selection committee. "She's far more open than photography and print. ... She has a strong background in painting and sculpture - a well-rounded eye."
Edwards sees Conklin as "the perfect bridge between artists and art historians, which is exactly what's housed in the List Art Center - the visual arts and art history departments." She adds, "I see Jo-Ann as someone who has a vision of the future and will take tremendous risks - that's important within an educational environment."
Conklin sees a good match in the fact that both the University of Iowa Museum of Art (UIMA) and the Bell are in university environments. She plans to work with faculty in designing shows that work with programs and courses in a collaborative, interdisciplinary way. At UIMA, she's had much success in involving other university departments, either through symposia suggested in conjunction with exhibitions or, for example, with a Japanese print exhibition, holding a Japanese festival involving musical performances, flower design and origami demonstrations. "It gets a lot of the departments into the gallery space - and helps build the audience."
Conklin is also a bridge between contemporary and more traditional art tastes. "I expect to do a fair amount of contemporary art shows - in media not so easily pigeonholed," says the new director. "But there will be a balance with shows that are more historical in nature." She puts on her fund-raising hat and adds, "It's a lot easier to fund the historic exhibitions than the contemporary ones."
For the past 10 years, Conklin has been graphic arts curator at UIMA, responsible for developing loan and permanent collection exhibitions, and for the acquisition and management of the museum's collection of works on paper. That collection includes more than 5,000 prints, photographs, drawings and collages, making it roughly equal in size to the Bell's in-house collections. Conklin also served as editor of the museum's publications, including exhibition catalogs.
At UIMA, Conklin has curated close to 40 exhibitions, ranging from prints and paintings to photography, sculpture, woodcuts and engravings. Before her curatorial career, she worked as the registrar of collections at UIMA, as a teaching assistant in art history at the University of Iowa, and as an intern at the Smithsonian Institute's Museum of History and Technology, Department of Photographic History.
No stranger to fund-raising, Conklin sees that as "part of the job. You have a product that you believe in and you go out and talk to people about it." She anticipates she will be talking to alumni, agencies, foundations and corporations for funding support.
In terms of the drought of national funding for the arts, such as the cuts in the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Conklin is pessimistic. "At Iowa, we were told by people from the NEA to not waste our time applying." She explains that although UIMA had a good track record in attracting NEA funds, the scaled-down era now pits museum and gallery exhibitions against PBS projects. And one important criterion for funding is the number of people affected by the programming. "So a gallery like UIMA or Brown will not be competitive against the baseball series on PBS," she says, adding, "My hope is that it's a cyclical thing ... the NEA has a history of coming back."
In addition to her work at UIMA, Conklin has lectured extensively at the university on the history of photography. She has organized numerous symposia, including "Photography in the Marketplace: The Rise of an Art Form" in 1989. That particular symposium was in honor of the sesquicentennial of the invention of photography.