BY SUZI STEFFEN
SAM ABELL
A female three-toed sloth carrying a baby beneath
herself crosses a playa to reach the Asunta River in
Bolivia, from the “Amazonia” exhibition
Challenges and Changes
Jill Hartz on the past, present and future of the J-Schnitz
B
udget cuts, understaffi ng, a
75th anniversary — and the
most successful opening in the
museum’s history, replete with caped
crusaders and surreptitious cell photos.
Jill Hartz, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum
of Art’s director, may be only a year and
four months into her tenure, but her time
at the UO has been fi lled with a mixture
of cooperation and blocked paths. As staff
prepare for a show she brought with her
from Virginia — a show sure to resonate
with the environmentalism of many UO
students, staff and faculty — Hartz stays
busy setting a course, or several, for the
museum.
Good news fi rst. Obviously, there’s
“The Art of the Superhero,” which
occasioned a huge line at its opening and
brought in thousands of visitors, many of
whom wouldn’t usually go to a museum.
That exhibit, which closes Jan. 3 (get in
there now!), came about directly because
of an English professor and his desire to
collaborate with the J-Schnitz.
Hartz has been pleasantly surprised, she
says, to fi nd people in Eugene “really open
to new ideas, anything that might work.”
Like many arts institutions that spend a
considerable amount of time fundraising
for a building campaign, the museum didn’t
have a clear strategy after the three-year
renovation process, and several directors
and interim directors have come and gone.
Hartz seems to be here to stay, at least for
a while. “Having a plan has been really
warmly welcomed,” she says.
But she was also surprised by the lack
of collaboration across campus in the
arts. Hartz wants arts festivals, perhaps
organized by themes and reaching across
the visual arts, theater, dance, music and
more. In the ’60s, she says, arts departments
at the UO collaborated on a regular basis.
Then budget cuts (long before Measure 5,
if you can believe it) moved departments
and institutions like the J-Schnitz away
from each other and even into competition
at times.
After Hartz arrived, she and the Oregon
Bach Festival’s then-new executive
director, John Evans, started to meet to
talk about collaboration. They and others
restarted a UO Arts Council, and Hartz
says she’s eager to collaborate with others
in the visual arts in the city as well. “I’m
happy to support the idea of arts tourism,”
she says, especially “if we’re going to be a
city known for the arts.”
In this city, too, Hartz knows that
the museum needs to take the lead on
diversifying outreach and programming.
Though she says the primary constituency
of the JSMA remains the students at the UO
(“It’s a teaching museum,” she repeats),
she knows that K-12 students need access
to the collections as well. Public school
budgets strained under the burden of years
of neglect can’t always stretch to cover
transportation to the UO, however, so the
J-Schnitz began a modest campaign this
year called “Fill Up the Bus.” Hartz says
that 95 percent of all schools that heard
about the transportation help took the
J-Schnitz up on it, double what the program
expected. “We didn’t realize how big the
need was,” Hartz says. “We’ve had huge
visitation numbers this fall, but there’s also
great need.”
For last fall’s “Cuba Avant-Garde”
exhibit, the museum produced all materials,
from catalog to wall labels to brochures,
in both English and Spanish. But a Latin
American show shouldn’t be the only
place for bilingual publications. “Looking
at statistics, the Latino population is
WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
going to be about 20 percent in Oregon,”
Hartz says. “Many of the fi rst-generation
students will have families from Mexico.
What does that mean for the community
and the university?”
She wants the J-Schnitz to “create a
dialogue” both with the Latino and the
Asian and Asian-American populations
of Eugene and the UO, and partly to that
end, she’s created a leadership council and
some student advisory groups. “We have a
strong Asian collection, and we’re building
a strong Latin American collection,”
she says. “There’s an opportunity for
enrichment at all levels, not just students.”
With Oregon in fi nancial crisis for much
of the recent past and the severe recession,
all of Hartz’ goals for the collection and the
physical space of the museum sometimes
seem like a dream. Cuts in staffi ng mean
that fi lling the galleries, including the
4,000-sq.ft. exhibit space, requires the
staff “to do more work and more varieties
of work,” she says. Like former UO
president Dave Frohnmayer, Hartz says it’s
time to turn even more to private donors.
“Fundraising is building friends, building
support because we believe in what we
do,” she says.
In the immediate future, 2010 brings
several new exhibits to the J-Schnitz.
One, opening Jan. 17, is “Amazonia,”
which came with Hartz from her former
position at the University of Virginia’s art
musuem. Photographer Sam Abell planned
to go to the headwaters of the Amazon
as a documentarian, and when Danish
photographer Torben Ulrik Nissen met
Abell, they decided to work together on the
project to document ecosystems in Peru
and Bolivia. From an ecological point of
view, “it’s amazing,” Hartz says, but she’s
also interested in the photographic choices
of the artists in a place where “there aren’t
huge herds of animals.” That means the
artists show single animals, insects and
fl ora “as part of a much larger system of
life,” she says.
Later in the year, contemporary fans
will be glad to hear, the museum hosts both
a Nam June Paik exhibit and an exhibit of
portraits by Andy Warhol and Gus Van
Sant. In the Charlottesville, Va., weekly
paper The Hook, a 2008 article on her job
at the J-Schnitz said that, “Under Jill’s
direction, the [UVA] museum became a
place that actively encouraged people to
view art as a means for exploring crucial
social issues” — something she’s clearly
eager to explore with the Warhol/Van Sant
exhibition as she plans collaborations with
LGBT groups on campus and in town.
The J-Schnitz, like most other arts
institutions, has to adapt to the 21st century
and social media. “We need to get away
from the old system, the ‘We know how
to do this best and we’ll tell you,’” Hartz
says. Staff members have started a Twitter
feed (http://twitter.com/JschnitzMoA) and,
much more alive right now, a Facebook fan
page (http://wkly.ws/28). They’re planning
to use YouTube and other streaming video
services as well. With cell phones, of
course, visitors can take photos and write
their own narratives on their blogs — even
when the museum doesn’t have permission
for those images. “Something is going to
change,” Hartz says. “We have to follow
UO protocol … but access to images is
impossible to stop.”
Jill Hartz
TODD COOPER
visual arts
Finally, she says, “We’re still a work in
progress.” As that work continues, Hartz
seems to want participation and feedback
from the UO and the community. Visit the
J-Schnitz and then send feedback to us and
we’ll send it on; comment on this story at
blogs.eugeneweekly.com or email Hartz at
hartz@uoregon.edu with your thoughts. ew
“Amazonia” opens Jan. 17 and runs through May 2. The
free opening reception runs 6-9 pm Saturday, Jan. 16, at
the J-Schnitz on the UO campus. jsma.uoregon.edu or
(541) 346-3027 for more info.
EUGENE WEEKLY DECEMBER 24, 2009 21