2027 SPE Annual Conference: Community in Contrast
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print this pageFrom Start to Finish: Curating Our First Exhibition
Jake Leslie, Zora Engalan, Diana Muccioli, Sponsored by Red River Paper
Saturday, October 17 - 1:30PM to 2:30PM
Hopkins 250
This presentation is sponsored by Red River Paper. Red River Paper has worked closely with photographers and artists for decades to curate a superior collection of media so that you can reflect and preserve the human experience.
Our momentum didn't end when we graduated college, it had just begun. We spent years making work, surrounded by classmates, professors, school exhibitions and structure. Graduation loomed on the horizon and we were in the depths of finals week. We started asking what comes next? Grad school? Jobs? What does our future look like? How do we keep moving forward, creating, and making a living? And most importantly how do we make a name for ourselves outside of our university environment?
This panel explores the ups and downs of four recent Wayne State University graduates curating and hosting their first exhibition. What started as an idea, a hope, and a dream quickly turned into a reality. We spent months creating, planning, problem solving and collaborating to host our first exhibition. We partnered with Nova 24, secured funding through Wayne State University, organized an open call, reviewed submissions, designed the exhibition, cleaned and transformed the gallery space, installed the work, marketed the event, and hosted an opening reception that brought together artists, collectors, students, faculty, friends, and members of the local community.
It's safe to say we learned a lot from hosting our first exhibition in our own space. We had never done anything like this. In this talk, we will walk through every step of our process. From writing a gallery statement and figuring out what we wanted the exhibition to say, to debating artwork placement, replacing lights, deep-cleaning the gallery over Fourth of July weekend, and realizing that the installation plan always changes once the work is actually on the walls.
One of the biggest things we discovered is that curating an exhibition is about so much more than hanging photographs. It's about building relationships, creating opportunities for other artists, and making spaces where people want to gather. We spent months thinking about how the work would flow through the gallery, how we could encourage people to stay and have conversations, and how we could reach audiences beyond the university. Through press outreach, social media, and community partnerships, we were able to bring new people through the doors and even receive coverage in the Grosse Pointe News.
"I learned how fulfilling it is to do something guided by community and peers and your own artistic practice. I also learned how to think of the big picture when curating and not just how work fits the theme but how it fits into the gallery as a whole. I realized from this experience that the community of artists and art resources is bigger than I thought" -Zora Engalan
"Curating made me realize that I'm always looking for what's next. I caught myself already thinking about future exhibitions and the artists I wanted to work with again. You never know who you're going to meet or what opportunities can come from one conversation." -Diana Muccioli
The opening reception reminded us why all of the hours we spent planning and working mattered. The gallery was packed. People lingered, talked about photography, connected with artists, and even purchased work. It was everything we had hoped the exhibition could become and proof that we could run a gallery. We got so much positive feedback from the community, it truly could not have gone any better.
This exhibition gave us momentum into what's next. We hope everyone attending our talk leaves feeling inspired to stop waiting for opportunities and start creating them, because sometimes the best way to build momentum is simply to begin. We hope our experience encourages others to take that first step, even when it feels overwhelming or absolutely insane. Not everyone has access to a gallery like we did, but anyone can hang work in their living room, invite friends over and print flyers.
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