New Wexner Center for the Arts director shares her vision for the future
Ga?tane Verna has become director of Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts at a most interesting time.
Museums and art centers, like the rest of the country, are emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic and figuring out how to reengage audiences and viewers. The Wexner Center is looking ahead to its 35th anniversary in 2024. And, on Nov. 28, her first day on the job, Verna was met with news of the resignation of OSU President Kristina Johnson. When Verna was named director, Johnson sent her personal notes of congratulations and welcome.
“I was heartbroken,” Verna said. “What I really liked was the idea that an important institute like this one was run by a woman scientist.”
Verna, 56, originally from Montreal and recently from Toronto, is not the Wexner Center’s first woman director – she succeeds Johanna Burton and before Burton, the long-serving Sherri Geldin. But she is the first woman of color, or person of color, to lead the center.
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She comes to the Wexner Center from Toronto’s Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, where she was director and artistic director. Prior to that, she was executive director and chief curator of the Musée d’art de Joliette in Québec. She has degrees in a variety of areas, including art history from the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, the Institut National du Patrimoine in Paris and Concordia University in Montreal.
She was born in the Republic of Congo to Haitian parents, but since the age of 2, has lived in Canada. She and her husband, Gaétan Haché, share a similar first name with different spellings and accent marks. They have two children, Léontyne, 21, and Edwige, 17.
For the time being, Verna is living in German Village. When her husband joins her, she said, they will look for permanent housing.
She has spent the last few weeks getting acquainted with Columbus and further acquainted with the Wexner Center.
“It was really important for me to meet and get to know all the team,” she said. “We called it a funny wedding receiving line.”
Verna is an engaging and vivacious conversationalist. When she left Toronto, she said, one of her well-wishers reminded her that “happy people change the world,” and Verna said she’s taken that on as her motto.
She also talks about how art is essential to human well-being and to society.
“What is a society without art? My God, it would be so boring,” she said.
Some other topics of conversation with Verna:
Her Haitian background
Verna said that her parents left Haiti in the 1960s. Her father, a doctor, died in 2008, and her mother, now 90, lives in Montreal. She considers herself “one of the children of the Haitian idea that all are created equal.”
“I was raised by parents that made me understand that we are never alone and that I must understand my position and the responsibility that comes with it. I represent everyone in this community regardless of race or creed. But of course, I am a Black woman. I am a child of the Haitian Revolution.”
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Her views on the Wexner Center
Before she interviewed for the Wexner Center position, the only place in Ohio Verna had been was Cleveland.
"But I knew about the Wexner Center, that it was an art lab, an institution that gives artists the possibility to develop new works in film and video, art, and that it was making a strong contribution—but also that it was maybe sort of underground. I knew of many of the artists who were shown here, and I knew of the directorship of Sherri Geldin. I knew about the Wexner Prize (awarded to contemporary artists in a variety of mediums).
“I knew about the architecture of the building—its strong presence and its challenges. It’s not your usual building. Maybe it is challenging to exhibit in this building, but if you fight the building, you will never win. Right now, I think they have been really smart in how they’ve presented Carlos’ work (in the exhibit, "Carlos Motta: Your Monsters, Our Idols").
“In the end, we’re always in this building. The challenge is, how do we make magic in this place?”
Her initial goals for the Wexner Center
Verna already has asked the Wexner Center staff to look at exhibits and programs from the last 10 years. “Have we done artists young and old, international and local? Maybe we haven’t done much sculpture or painting—abstract and/or figurative. I want to see our blind spots.”
Her staff, she said, is “really dedicated to this place, but we need to learn to communicate better both internally and externally so that people can come and celebrate the work of the artists presented here.
“In looking ahead to the 35th anniversary in 2024, I want to mine the past in order to inform the institution. And how can the website for a non-collecting institution (which the Wexner Center is) be a living archive for many people?"
Verna also expressed an interest in creating books.
“I’d like to get back to producing catalogs and maybe write an anthology of what has happened here in film/video, performing arts and visual arts," she said.
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Her vision for the future
Verna’s serious organization of exhibits and programs will happen for seasons beginning in 2024. She said she is excited to present an array of contemporary artists, and is looking forward to a collaborative exhibit involving the Wexner Center and other central Ohio art institutions.
She doesn’t plan to make any major changes to the mission and structure of the Wexner Center.
“It’s not, 'Oh my God, we need to change everything,'” she said.
“This place is not broken. It’s fine. But we are coming out of a very challenging time and need to bring people back to the center, continue to communicate with the people who are still at home, and continue to offer programs for people who are very far away.”
Verna said she wants the Wexner Center to be an important component of life in Columbus, the state of Ohio and beyond.
“I will do my best to be in the community,” she said. “It is my responsibility to steward the practice of the artist and to that, I will bring my whole self.”
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: New Wexner Center director Gaetane Verna discusses future goals
