Beyond the museum walls

Art museums are often seen as “stagnant places,” especially by young people, according to Birmingham Museum of Art curator Hallie Ringle. But museums can be more than cultural temples where visitors file through and stare at pictures.

“It’s important that people see the museum as an active space that reflects their values and challenges them,” Ringle said.

And museums should be accessible. 

“Museums can go to the people,” Ringle said. “The people don’t always have to go to the museum.”

Ringle, until recently assistant curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, will now have the opportunity to put her ideas into practice in the Magic City. The Birmingham Museum of Art named Ringle as its new Hugh Kaul Curator for Contemporary Art, effective Nov. 1.

“Hallie brings with her an impressive record of groundbreaking exhibitions, working with both emerging and established artists,” said BMA Director Graham Boettcher, who also cited Ringle’s “deep commitment to community engagement.”

Ringle will be responsible for developing exhibitions, publications and lectures, as well as planning acquisitions, loans, traveling exhibitions and community partnerships involving the museum’s contemporary collection, which includes about 3,000 works.

“I like artists who want to engage other people, and I like institutions that want to do the same thing,” she said.

Ringle earned her B.A. in art history and history from the University of North Carolina and her M.A. in art history with a concentration in contemporary African art from the University of Texas. She began her career as a curatorial assistant at the Studio Museum in 2013, becoming assistant curator in 2016.

In Harlem, Ringle managed the museum’s artist-in-residence program and organized a dozen exhibitions, earning praise from such outlets as The New York Times and Artforum.

She curated two current shows at The Studio Museum — “Firelei Báez: Joy Out of Fire,” on display at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and “Maren Hassinger: Monuments,” an exhibition of eight site-specific sculptures at Marcus Garvey Park

The latter was “the best success story I ever had with an exhibition,” Ringle said.

“We had people who live and work there to help build their own sculpture,” she said.

The job at the BMA was appealing to Ringle, a North Carolina native, for several reasons.

“I knew I wanted to go back to the South someday and work for a museum,” she said.

The BMA has “an incredible staff” and Boettcher provides “visionary leadership,” Ringle said. Birmingham, she said, is an “interesting city” with “an incredible history and a very significant place in the South.”

And she advocates for Southern artists. “They deserve more attention, especially from institutions.”

Ringle had never been to Birmingham prior to her interview with the BMA, but her impressions have been strongly positive.

“I loved it,” she said. “It’s such a creative city. It was exciting to feel that energy.”

Birmingham has lots of “interesting, creative spaces,” including makerspaces, as well as restaurants and other amenities, Ringle said. The Sidewalk Film Festival was going on while she and her husband were in town, which helped too. 

“There was creativity bursting out of every seam,” she said.

The BMA’s contemporary collection was another attraction. The holdings are “incredible, especially for black artists,” said Ringle, who has a passion for work by artists of African descent in the U.S. and elsewhere.

In terms of further building the collection, Ringle said she’d like to “mine the past and see what kind of artists have been forgotten in the collection.”

Ringle said she plans to search for both “emerging artists and artists who perhaps were overlooked in their time.” She will also lead the Collectors’ Circle for Contemporary Art at the BMA. 

“It seems like a incredible resource for the museum and for me as a curator to have so many knowledgeable people committed to contemporary art and the mission of the museum,” she said.

That mission involves the community engagement and social awareness that Ringle is passionate about.

“I love when an artist is interested and committed to community engagement, but I also love artists who are talking about contemporary and historic issues in unexpected ways,” she said.

Exhibitions should involve the viewer intellectually rather than spoon feeding them, Ringle believes.

“I try to approach exhibitions as a conversation rather than as a determined answer,” she said.

And it’s important to make community members feel comfortable with visiting the museum, according to Ringle

“Certain people may not go to museums, because they don’t see themselves in that space,” she said. “This is a public collection, so people need to feel some kind of ownership about what they’re seeing.”

Ringle’s goals for engaging the community feed into her overall grand vision for the museum and for her new home city.

“Birmingham is the perfect place to become the Southern epicenter of art and that extends beyond the museum, so whether that is public art or bringing the collection to unexpected spaces or just having people engage with the museum is different ways, the BMA can set a national standard for what they can look like,” Ringle said.