60 Seconds With Holly Hughes

By the time Holly E. Hughes, MA ’02, completed her master’s thesis at UB, she had already been working for five years as curatorial assistant at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, helping manage one of the world’s premier collections of 20th century modern art.

An alumna of UB’s former art history graduate program with a minor in Indigenous studies, Hughes, now Godin-Spaulding Senior Curator for the Collection, has recently shepherded its permanent collection through a $230 million capital expansion project and public re-opening in 2023. She has also taught museum studies at UB and Canisius College.

What keeps you busy at work?
In addition to curating exhibitions from the collection, and working with colleagues on acquisitions, I oversee all aspects of the museum’s fine art collection of over 8,000 objects, supervising and acting as liaison with a number of departments, including...Art Preparation, Registration, Imaging and Visual Resources, and Archives and Research Resources.

Describe your personal philosophy as curator—what are you trying to accomplish?
My curatorial approach is always in some way a personal narrative, and I’ve been told I operate more like an artist than a curator. Buffalo also has had a huge part shaping who I am professionally. I was born in the Southtowns and live there now, to be closer to my parents. Collaborations with UB and other culturals are especially important to me.

What’s a good example of collaboration?
“The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art,” a major international collaboration with UB and China in 2005. I basically lived at the UB Art Gallery for two years doing that show. As part of that, I traveled with the UB alumni group to Beijing, and my mother, who passed in 2019, went on that trip with us. She talked about it at the end of her life. She had never traveled abroad.

How did your UB degree and your curation experience there help prepare you for your career?
I wrote my thesis on artists dealing with body issues and eating disorders. Martin Berger, who taught English and art history then, was a wonderful influence. He had a crystal-clear view of art's role in the world and its connection to everyday life. All UB professors did, but he encouraged me to take on the thesis project. Jolene Rickard, with whom I did my minor in Indigenous Studies, was also an incredible force. She changed the way I thought about objects at the museum, and how I interact with artists.

Working at the museum while studying art history in graduate school allowed me to have my feet in both worlds.

You’ve been involved in some of Buffalo’s biggest art milestones, from Spencer Tunick’s famous photo at the Central Terminal to the re-opening of the AKG. What are a few personal highlights?
I’m still processing the re-opening of the AKG…to be the curator of a collection that I grew up with, it’s like a dream. Overseeing its re-installation was a lot of stress! All eyes were on our inaugural installation. I’m incredibly proud of the work our staff and the entire museum accomplished, especially during the pandemic and the [December 2023] blizzard.

Now we have these incredible spaces to showcase the collection chronologically for the first time. There’s European modern art, but also stories of Buffalo embedded in it, and marginalized figures who only recently have gotten the attention they deserve.

The AKG has also helped me drive my creative desires; I got to write “Bella Meets Balla,” a children’s book published in 2017 featuring one of the collection’s most popular paintings, “Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash,” by Giacomo Balla.