Max Fields joined the Visual Arts Center in April as its new director after most recently working with FotoFest as a curator and director of programs since 2019. As the director of an experiential, public-facing curatorial laboratory at UT, Fields will provide vision and programmatic leadership in his new role at the Visual Arts Center. We recently caught up with Fields to learn more about his plans for the center.
What attracted you to this role at the Visual Arts Center?
My arts education began over a decade ago when I was working as a communications intern at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH). In addition to meeting, working with, and learning from contemporary artists in conjunction with the museum’s exhibitions and public programming, one of the perks of my internship was having total access to the CAMH’s immense contemporary art-focused library. As someone taking my first steps into the art world, I had an insatiable curiosity about how artists and arts professionals maneuvered to meaningfully contribute to an arts culture I wanted to be a part of.
One book I pulled from the shelf that helped define my path in the arts was a collection of Lawrence Weiner’s writings and interviews titled Having Been Said (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2005). In that book, I read about how Weiner and his peers got their start in the late ’60s and ’70s, presenting their projects in exhibitions at university museums and galleries in the U.S. and Europe. For these artists, who were pushing conceptual art discourse to its limits, university art spaces offered supportive platforms to present research, test ideas, challenge aesthetic tastes and collaborate with curious artists, students and academics. These spaces often provided the artists with exhibitions, performance venues and platforms for lectures and writing long before established museums and art spaces would take a chance on them. These university museums and galleries were on the front lines of contemporary art. I am deeply inspired by that moment in art history. Throughout my curatorial career, I aligned my interests in pedagogy, artists and art history and museums to reflect that ethos of experimentation, risk-taking and artist support. Similarly, the Visual Arts Center is designed to support early to midcareer artists whose practices test the limits of contemporary art discourse — it’s in the center’s slogan: “Always Challenging, Always Changing!”
Over the past 14 years, my predecessors developed the VAC into something genuinely unique in Texas. It is a laboratory for UT students, staff, faculty and external international artists and curators to push the boundaries of aesthetics, historical narratives, art and critical theory, community collaboration, and the exhibition as a medium in and of itself. Hundreds of artists have presented their works in projects at the VAC that would otherwise have never been seen, not only in Texas but likely at venues somewhere else in the world. I’m thinking of projects such as Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork’s monumental inflatable sculpture Like a Breath of Fresh Water, commissioned by the VAC in 2023, the exhibition Strange Pilgrims co-presented by the VAC and Contemporary Austin in 2016, and the community-focused project Untitled Nothing Factory by artist Amanda Ross-Ho in 2010 wherein students worked hand-in-hand with the artist to challenge and explore the boundaries of white cube exhibitions. These exhibitions and projects represent only a few at the VAC that offered new and necessary contemporary art perspectives. The VAC has set a high bar for other contemporary art organizations to support daring projects beyond the scope that aligns with the art world canon.
It is an incredible privilege to build upon the experimental legacy of the Visual Arts Center as director. In my first few months, I’ve found myself supported by incredible collaborators within the team at the VAC, by external departments at the University, by institutions around the city of Austin, and of course, by our longtime fiscal sponsors and donors. Everyone I meet has told me how they have worked with the VAC to produce innovative, collaborative projects that could have only been possible here. I look forward to developing exciting, challenging and novel projects that strengthen the relationships between the UT communities we serve and the larger art world.
What is the VAC’s current role within the University’s and region’s visual arts ecosystem, and how do you see that evolving in the future?
The Visual Arts Center is a hub for collaboration between the College of Fine Arts, disparate University departments and research initiatives, and institutions in Austin, the U.S. and around the globe. Our mission is not to function simply as a contemporary art kunsthalle, of which there are many in Texas, but to produce projects that foster collaboration between international artists and curators and UT students, staff and faculty. For each project that the VAC brings to Texas, we develop partnerships with the UT community to broaden the scope of our work and expand the possibilities of how exhibitions are presented in Texas. This means that invited artists are engaging in conversation and working together with leading experts and emerging voices in academia in diverse fields — from art history to data analytics — to create entryways for learning that are accessible to anyone despite their previous engagement with contemporary art. At The University of Texas, we have the amazing opportunity to mine ideas and issues that relate to all facets of culture and then present those ideas and topics to an interested public invested in pushing culture forward. The VAC will continue to develop projects that align with this community-centered, academically focused approach to broaden the reach of our work and strengthen our impact. For example, we are currently working with colleges outside the College of Fine Arts and external institutions to bring exhibitions and public programs that reflect UT’s engagement with subjects such as theatre and performance, graphic design and mass media communications and environmental science and engineering. We’re beyond excited to share what we’ve learned with UT students, staff and the Central Texas public through our programming.
As a university gallery, you have multiple audiences: students, staff and faculty members, the local community, and a broader art-seeking public. How do you engage these different groups?
The Visual Arts Center has an incredible history of collaboration with UT students, and with the diverse nature of subjects explored through our exhibitions, the VAC naturally attracts audiences from disparate academic disciplines. And those outside the UT community who are currently invested in contemporary art and have their finger on the pulse of Austin’s eclectic arts scene are already aware of our excellent programming. The goal that we’re setting now is to strengthen our engagement with these two groups and expand the reach of our programming to those who are not already engaged in contemporary art by creating more opportunities for hands-on learning through public programming, including workshops, family day events, artist-led tours, and by presenting media in forms familiar to most people such as film screenings. I truly believe the recipe for meaningful engagement between art and the public is active engagement, meaning, rather than simply invite the public to look at art, we should invite people to make it, study it, learn from the artists, speak and perform in public with us, share thoughts and ideas, and volunteer to participate in our projects. The Visual Arts Center represents the work of dozens of people at any given moment. We’re working to connect our team members with the public, to meet and get to know our audiences more deeply so that we can represent their assorted interests more directly and solicit participation and engagement reciprocally.
What are you most excited for audiences to see in the 2024-25 season?
The team at the VAC is producing several exhibitions for the 2024–25 season, all of which are exciting and worthy of a visit! This fall, we’re debuting Violette Bule’s project Una Luz, which draws upon the artist’s archive of inmate-made photographs culled from workshops the artist held between 2010 and 2012 in Venezuelan penitentiaries. Bule spent two years leading free, unsanctioned photography workshops for incarcerated people in Venezuelan penitentiaries that taught the value of creative expression. After learning photography fundamentals and theory, inmates were each given a disposable camera to make their own images, document their lives and share their pictures with friends and family on their cell walls. For over a decade, Bule held onto the archive of negatives from these workshops, unsure of how to develop these images into a sensitive project that doesn’t compromise the autonomy of the inmate photographers. With the VAC’s curatorial fellow, Maysa Martins, and in collaboration with art historian Michel Otayek, Bule will present a selection of these archival images, captured documentary video and recorded audio works made in collaboration with the inmates to discuss not only the value of creativity, but also the value of archival materials and the ethics of presenting archives that reflect the lives of marginalized peoples. Everyone should keep an eye out for our programming calendar for this project, as the artist will be at UT to lead a series of workshops for the public. We know the attending audience will leave this exhibition and adjoining programs with new perspectives on the relationships between creativity and freedom.
I’m also excited by our collaboration with Center Space Project (CSP), an undergraduate student-run arts collective with whom we work to present exhibitions and programs at the VAC. The students solicited invitations from the UT community to propose exhibitions for both the fall of 2024 and the spring of 2025, and we received a trove of exciting project submissions from which to choose. This fall, CSP is presenting an exhibition titled Retracing the Rubicon, which examines the power of collective catharsis and forms of communal healing by addressing individual trauma and grievances in a public setting. This intimate project features works by current and former UT students who utilize painting, printmaking, photography, video and sculpture to challenge common self-help prescriptions that position the individual as responsible for alleviating pain, suffering and sadness. Despite the heavy nature of this exhibition, it’s incredibly timely, reflecting on issues important to UT students and offering unique perspectives on the value of community when faced with challenging circumstances. I’m particularly proud that the VAC can offer a platform for students to express themselves through exhibitions, and I cannot wait to see this come together in the galleries.
If these two projects don’t pique your interest, remember the VAC’s slogan: Always Challenging, Always Changing. Sign up for our newsletter to learn about our other upcoming projects. There’s always something new around the corner, and there’s something for everyone.