Faculty Conversations: William Dooley

Faculty Conversations: William Dooley

By Terri Robertson

William Dooley, associate professor of art and director of the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art, talks about his curatorial process, the gallery’s role at UA and the endowment that makes his work possible. The gallery’s current exhibit, “In This House: Selections from the Permanent Collection,” runs through April 10.

1. What led you down this career path?

The exhibit "On This House: Selections from the Permanent Colletion" runs through April 10 at the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art. (Photo credit: Matthew Wood)
The exhibit “On This House: Selections from the Permanent Colletion” runs through April 10 at the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art. (Photo credit: Matthew Wood)

I’m trained as an artist and a painter. After finishing graduate school at the University of South Carolina, I got a job as a carpenter, then contracted to install exhibits at a museum in Columbia, South Carolina. I found I had a good feel for how to deal with space and objects, and how to prepare and exhibit them. From there, an opportunity came my way in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I was part of a two-person staff that ran a fine arts contemporary exhibit program within a multidisciplinary cultural arts center. I gained exposure to the process of identifying and organizing exhibits, grant writing, and exhibit production and promotion. I was there five to six years before I came to UA in 1988.

2. How is the role of gallery director and curator in a university setting different than it would be elsewhere?

My appointment here is divided: teaching, administration, citizenship in the department. Being director and curator of the gallery is only 60 percent of the job. I wear a lot of hats, but that’s the nature of the business. I don’t mind that.

A lot of curators travel, but over time I’ve recognized I can’t afford to travel. In addition to costing money, it costs time. When I’m away from here, all my other duties – teaching, service to the department – start to fall down pretty quickly. With the Internet, books and telephone calls, we can do a lot, and we have a great library at the University. If we have a lead on an artist, a show or a curator we want to work with, we can mine the information through those portals, and we’re able to keep our hand on the pulse of those things.

3. What types of work does the gallery exhibit?

William Dooley
William Dooley

My charge is to identify and organize exhibitions by regionally, nationally and internationally known artists to create visual cultural enrichment, as part of the learning philosophy of the department of art and art history.

We also have a permanent collection – primarily modern and contemporary art, works on paper. We have some paintings and small sculptures. It’s archived more than it’s shown because this is our only gallery. We pull a show from it every year.

This semester, I’m teaching an art museums practices class, so I’m also trying to do a second show with the permanent collection with the class, hopefully at Ferguson.

4. Walk us through the process of curating an exhibit.

I try to bring variety in medium. If one show is photography, another show is painting, drawing or ceramics. We also try to strike a variety in ethnicity and gender. All those considerations factor into how we cobble together our exhibits.

The gallery's permanent collection comprises primarily modern and contemporary art and works on paper, as well as some paintings and small sculpture.
The gallery’s permanent collection comprises primarily modern and contemporary art and works on paper, as well as some paintings and small sculpture.

Mostly, we’re looking all the time. It’s an ongoing process – looking at what’s out there, checking out schedules of shows happening all over the place. There are a number of small organizations like ours. When exhibits come through their hands, if we see one we want, we try to negotiate it coming here.

With any one artist, usually there’s the artist, often there’s the commercial gallery, there’s the institution that organized the show, and then there are the lenders. There could be one lender, or there could be eight. So it’s a small village of people who come into play as you try to negotiate. Sometimes it’s possible to get the show, but there are substitutions that take place. The original checklist of works might be modified because this work or that is wanted elsewhere, or something might sell.

We try to avoid showing an exhibit if it’s in Birmingham or somewhere close by. It’s kind of like having too many hospitals in one area. I take that approach because it costs so much to bring an exhibit. So I try not to overlap, which could also have a negative impact on the other venue.

5. Do you exhibit UA artists?

Gallery visitors at the March 10 reception for "In This House: Selections from the Permanent Collection"
Gallery visitors at the March 10 reception for “In This House: Selections from the Permanent Collection”

Every other year, we do a faculty show, and there are times when we do exhibitions that are part graduate students’ theses.

On occasion, we may organize a group exhibition comprised of advanced undergraduate students who work together to put it on. It gives them experience coordinating and thinking about the problems that come into play when organizing an exhibit. It’s interesting for them because typically they don’t experience the demands of an artistic performance production.

We create an expectation for them, with a timeline and deadlines. There have to be rough drafts, and those have to be reviewed and clarified. It’s a good process for them to have that experience, from planning through production.

6. Is there a memorable anecdote you can share from your time here?

We showed Paul Jones’ collection here back in 2005 (before Jones donated a 1,700-plus piece collection of American art to the University in 2008). It was really great to get to know Mr. Jones. I drove to Atlanta and picked a show out of his living room – and out of all his other rooms, because he had art everywhere. He might have been a little obsessive about collecting art, but that’s often the case with collectors and that’s what’s interesting about them.

That was a situation where we wanted the exhibit to expose a little bit of who this guy was, this collector, Paul Jones. It’s fun to do those things. It allows the community that attends these exhibits to see the human condition and process.

That’s what most artists are interested in, trying to capture something that’s going on in their life and environment now so that in the future, when their work is looked back upon, there is something to be gained.

In a way artists are taking these materials and means of expression we think of as visual arts, and they’re trying to record their time, their emotions and the events of their time – and not only pictorially. They’re trying to capture the experience of the human condition, so someone looking from the future recognizes the merit of what was going on in a time in the past.

7. How is the permanent collection stored?

We recently had an opportunity to expand our collection storage, which is across the street from our gallery. All last year, whenever I had time, I was moving our collection, literally. It was a very physical process, but we’re excited we have that in place.

The new storage facility is such that someone can visit the collection space and actually see the work. It’s on big long racks, so it’s not just put away. It’s a lot more exciting to have it so people, especially students, can interact with it. They can walk in these aisles and see the work. It’s not on display, but it’s accessible and can be viewed and studied. I’m looking forward to more of that activity in the near future.

8. Can you tell us a little bit about the history of the gallery?

William Dooley and a gallery visitor discuss one of the works in the permanent collection.
William Dooley and a gallery visitor discuss one of the works in the permanent collection.

Universities are multifaceted and this one’s no exception. The gallery has a longstanding relationship with teaching at the University. The department of art and art history was founded in 1945 and started to occupy Woods Quad. The gallery started collecting early but not consistently. They didn’t have spaces to keep collections; they just put them up.

Ted Klitzke (an art history professor and head of the UA art department from 1959 to 1968), had a lot of connections to museums, and that had a lot to do with why the gallery existed. Initially, it was funded with money from tuition. In the late ’60s, the College of Arts and Sciences adopted the gallery and gave it a budget and appointed a staff member. It was modest, but that was a lot for a small liberal arts university.

In 1989, Farley Moody Galbraith (daughter of Sarah McCorkle Moody, the gallery’s original supporter) approached me and the department chair. She wanted to endow the gallery with support devoted to programming. We were excited about that, and an endowment was established that earns funding for the exhibits we do. We try to dedicate the funds annually to one big show, but we also try to find a balance in dispersing the money so there isn’t a disparity, with one big show and everything else on a shoestring.

Thanks to her support and the support of the Galbraith family, we still are able to afford to bring the work of well-known artists to Tuscaloosa.

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The Sarah Moody Gallery of Art is located in Garland Hall at The University of Alabama. Gallery hours are 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 5-8 p.m. Thursday evenings.