Wesley Knight  0:00  
This is a KUNV studios original program. The following is special programming aired in collaboration with the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art on the campus of UNLV, and does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Deanne Sole  0:22  
Hello and welcome to the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art radio show. My name is Deanne, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Zida. Hi Zida. Hey, Deanne. How are you fantastic? Zida has been the Museum's Manager of Museum Community Engagement and Outreach since about January 2025, is that right?

Zida  0:51  
Yes, January 13, 2025 till now.

Deanne Sole  0:54  
Okay, you have a better memory of the exact date than I do. Thank you. Okay, so you specialize in a number of really interesting things to do with museum work, and I want us to talk about those things in depth in a moment. But just to start, just so we get to know you a little bit. Can you tell us a bit about what you were doing before you joined the Marjorie Barrick, before you got to Las Vegas, how did you get here?

Zida  1:23  
Thank you. So before joining Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art in 2025 my path has really been shaped by both international curatorial practices and my museum working in the United States. So I started in China, where I worked on curatorial projects, including the 13th National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Beijing. And at that time, the experience really made me start, start thinking critically about how exhibitions are structured and whose voices are included or excluded. And then I moved to United States for my graduate study, basically my doctoral program, I moved to Tallahassee, Florida, and I started my PhD at the Florida State University. I worked closely with the Museum of Fine Arts over the at FSU as a museum educator and a co curator, I was involved in in those exhibitions, like the art bonding and a part together, and worked on the public programming, student and the faculty engagement and the community partnerships. Those are really like where my thinking shifted from, like focusing on exhibitions as objects to museums as social space. So at that time, I started research on those participatory action research, like third place theory, etc. And then started because of covid. Of course, covid hit in 2020, and then I started thinking like a digital space and digital exhibitions, and thinking about how museums can become a more collaborative and inclusive place. So that's basically what I did in the past, like 5, 6, 7, years, I guess. 

Deanne Sole  3:20  
So that sounds like a real shift in thinking, because I think you actually did a bit of actual art making before that didn't you? You did a little bit of, I say a little bit, I don't actually know, you did some work in making ceramics.

Zida  3:36  
That's correct. Yes. So originally, I graduated from a Fine Arts Institute in China called Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in Wuhan, and and then I got my degree in 2014 that quite like a, my gosh, that was 12 years ago. And then, yeah, I did a ceramics and I also did a Chinese, traditional Chinese paintings. It's just there is kind of like this connection between me making art and me as a research, research researcher researching art. Because I've seen so many talented artists, student artists at that moment, and some of them, they're like, relatively big names in China, and also they are gaining international reputations. And then compared with them, I was like thinking, Oh, my art, it's not in a perfect shape. And then I made a shift from an art-making artist to an artist using Google doc spreadsheets, yes, yeah, yeah, that's good: admin artist. That's great.

Deanne Sole  4:50  
I like that. And I mean it. You're, it feels like your shift from art making yourself to the kind of admin outreach you. Now that that focus on plurality and inclusiveness that you mentioned before. I mean, when you're a ceramicist, you are the artist, you are the person who is making your thing and and you are kind of in control of that, but it sounds like your thinking has shifted, as you said, to really emphasize the idea of lots of people creating something together, and the thing they create being kind of a dynamic, moving situation, rather than an object that you put in a museum or you sell it in a gallery. Should we go back to something that you mentioned, which is third place theory, which I think really ties in to this idea of bringing people together? Can you talk to us about that? Like, tell us what that is?

Zida  5:51  
Yeah, absolutely. So the third place theory was originally developed by Ray Oldenburg, yeah, and who was looking at those everyday social life in United States, especially in the 1980s and '90s. He mentioned that home, at first place you spend most of the time, over there, at home, and then your school or work, depending on if you're employed or if you are a student, so that's the your second place. And other than those two places, third place is a space beyond home and work, like places like cafe, cafeterias and libraries or community centers, where people can gather together, build the relationships, having community engagement activities, social interactions, and they will feel a sense of belonging over there. So it's very much tied to the social life for the of the American middle class at that time. And also, there's a shift for those museum scholars that adopted that third place theory into the museum industry. So this we started seeing like the museum, how museum could be, could serve as a third place, okay? And we also insert like me. I see myself as a constructivist. So have you ever heard about constructivism?

Deanne Sole  7:19  
Tell us. Tell us about constructivism again, this is a word I've heard you use a number of times. Yes.

Zida  7:24  
So constructivism is like original developed by Vygotsky and Bandura. Yeah. So we see the teaching and learning sessions as a, as a session that an opportunity we will co-construct something together which perfectly fits the third place theory as well, because everyone will have the opportunity to become the teacher and learning sessions facilitator, instead of a traditional behaviorism classroom teacher is the, is the only center of this teacher learning session. Students just taking notes and answer the questions that the student, I'm sorry, the professor, asked. So instead of doing those of a traditional model, constructivism sees everybody brings their own previous experiences and the knowledge into a collaboratively constructing teaching and learning session. We help each other facilitate our new construction, new knowledge-building. So that is sometime I see myself even in a third place. And as you mentioned that I made art before and for now, what I love to do is like to see the process itself, how I facilitate other people's learning, and what I can learn from everyone's learning from everyone's previous experiences and previous knowledge. And then I can put everything together. I see myself as a facilitator, and then I co-construct something new. And ideally, I can generate some creative work, like a maybe an art based research journal article, paper or a book, like I mentioned before, or like a collaborative, co-curated exhibition, because the process itself, it is in process of art making. Does that make sense?

Deanne Sole  9:37  
It does. Can you give us like a practical example of what would you do to say make a classroom more more constructivist, more like a third place?

Zida  9:47  
Oh, yeah, definitely. So for example, there's a class at FSU my professor originally developed called visitor centered exhibition. So. So the final outcome for that class is to cure, co-curating a show together. Co-creating exhibition together. But we started with those brainstorming big ideas, and we also like to the students to understand that the curatorial power can be and should be distributed to everyone we share. The curatorial authorities to the students and as well as the professors were too and our community members, we invited the artist. They can, they can bet, because they are. They are. They may. They made those artworks so they they have the best knowledge of how to distribute, how to distribute to those curatorial knowledge and authorities. So in that case, everybody can drop their ideas and propose something together, and we were co authoring the labels together. Okay, instead of one person read everything to get in by themselves, and then invite the museum staff members or other curators to revise them, we will all. We usually start with a student what they want to write as a writing project, and this this model usually works for small and middle sized museums, especially for university affiliated museums, because those museums, we have resources, educational resources, and we can use that opportunity as a teaching or learning opportunity too?

Deanne Sole  11:44  
So do the students then ask questions of the artists. So they say, they come along and they say, Hey, I want a label that's kind of like this, yes. And then they come up with questions that will help the artists to give them the information that they okay.

Zida  11:59  
We usually allow the students to interview the artists and see and of course, that's part of the curriculum design, so they will need to understand what the student what, what those artists really want to say in their work. And then that is part of like, yeah, how students can better understand the tutorial process as well as try to build a better understanding of the artist and those artworks. So it's kind of like a very, like a decentralized process. We invited everybody to collaborate together together, and then we co construct a new knowledge together. And the usual outcome would be a co-curated exhibition. And we also want to hear the audience's voices, because they are actively reshaping the exhibitions. We will leave the sticky notes. We will leave the prompt cards and in gather space and online so they can actively make their contributions. To point out, I like this part. I do not like that part. Usually, we will receive a lot of good feedback. But you know, we will also want to acknowledge those parts that we can improve for the future. So we encourage it. We encourage audiences and community members to drop something you really feel like disconnected personally with the art or with this show we are having. 

Deanne Sole  13:43  
Okay, what, what kind of feedback were you getting? These are the shows that you were doing at FSU, correct, yes; what kind of feedback were people leaving?

Zida  13:50  
It's pretty good. It varies because for the previous show, let me use the example of the Art of Bonding. The Art of Bonding is like a show that I highlighted, like a twin sister artist, artists, and then one artist who Bao her work, she has one work. Basically, it's like, yeah, she, she visualized like your her windows during covid, and in an anime style. And then we, we and they. We installed one iPad on the installed one iPad, and we also left the we also made the poster cards based on the window animations. So we left the postcards. What we did is like we invited the visitors to leave something you want to say to the artist or the show itself, and then you can either to keep this to you. You can either keep this in the gallery or you can mail it. Back to us. We're married to the artist, and then eventually we have some feedback. They ask for improvements. Like, okay, the like, I still remember once, one visitor said we eventually we collected, like, maybe 85 to 95 I don't remember, I don't remember quantities based, anyways, less than 100 poster cards. I still have them at my place. Some of those postcards, one or one audience, yeah. What he left is like, yeah, I really don't like the small scale. It's amazing poster, why don't you just display that on a TV,

Deanne Sole  15:44  
what, and make it bigger on it, yeah, okay,

Zida  15:47  
Yeah, yeah, that, that audience is like, yeah, why don't you just put it on a TV instead for this small iPad? I mean, yeah, because that is some, sometimes we realize, okay, we may we, I kind of expected that that type of feedback, because when you are engaging yourself, having a small scale iPad and stuff like a real TV, yeah, some, some visitors, audiences, they may have the questions, why you don't put it on TV or large scale monitors or screen

Deanne Sole  16:20  
Or project it on the wall or something,

Zida  16:23  
Then the point is, like, yeah, that was like a pop up show only for like, six months, and we have very limited resources and space. Okay?

Deanne Sole  16:31  
So it's a matter of maybe a monitor wouldn't have been convenient to hang and to buy and all that kind of thing. Yeah?

Zida  16:39  
And there's another, there's another example. Is from the Apart Togather, a an exhibition that I co-created in 2020 right around covid. What we did is like, yeah, the artist who basically she had in 2018 she made a sky project called Our Sky. And then that project she she took pictures of the sky from her friends. She gave prompts, okay, describe this moment and take a picture of your sky, and then attach an audio how you describe the sky or describe yourself, how do you feel? But that about that moment, and then she and she, finally, she edited like, a five minutes video called our sky, and then we displayed that sky. However, because of covid, we started to think, Oh, should we do that again? Because everybody stayed at home. What are we going to do? Go to the patio and then walk like, make like, one, 100 loops. Make sure we can, we can finish, close our circle on our Apple Watch. So what we did is like, yeah, we invited the audiences to take a picture of this guy and upload the sky to a digital platform along with their voices. Yeah, and there that was. That was totally a multilingual project. We collect, like, Chinese, Korean, French, English and, yeah, Spanish. So many different language submissions, meaning, and we, we made that as a group project too. But we also have some, we also received some weird, 

Deanne Sole  18:42  
Oh yeah, yeah, the kinds of things that people send you, when they say, when you just ask them to send you things, yeah?

Zida  18:48  
Because everyone has their personalities. So I think yes, some, some of them that they acted real weird, and then in any other way, decided not displaying those guys in the project.

Deanne Sole  19:00  
Okay, that was a bit too strange. Yeah, I think covid turned everybody a bit a bit odd for a while there. But yeah, I know what you're saying. I know when we ask people to say, draw things, we get some strange drawings. The exhibition that we've got up at the moment, actions for the earth. I remember when we had that Korean exchange student group, and we have one piece in that show where you can make pictures out of dried beans, and they made a caricature, I remember that, and they laughed and laughed. They thought that it was a caricature of their teacher. They thought that was so funny. So yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I suppose that's one of the features of the openness that you you talk about, and that you promote and and facilitate, is you don't always know what that's going to invite in from other people around you. You know, how are they going to see that invitation? How will they interpret it and and part of that process. Of managing is managing those unexpected things where you say it's not quite appropriate, yeah,

Zida  20:07  
I know, yeah, that happens, but imagine, imagine that the facilitating and coordinating that process as an art making process. So you will always have some you, of course, you have some positive and you have some some negative practices, 

Deanne Sole  20:24  
Yeah, like any art making, you're always shaping it into something that you can think of, that you can kind of see in your head. Now I'm when you started talking about that exhibition, and you you thought, okay, covid is happening. We should invite people to contribute. I remember something that you wrote about hybrid exhibitions. Oh, yeah. Is that correct? You mentioned that exhibition in your essay about hybrid exhibitions, didn't you? Yes. Was that an example of an ex? Was that? Because I remember you had two examples of exhibitions that you'd done, the same ones that you mentioned, I think, at the beginning of the show, and you said one of them was a true hybrid, hybrid exhibition, because it was planned that way from the start. Yes, and the other one sort of became kind of a hype. Is that the one that sort of became a hybrid exhibition in that it wasn't planned that way, yeah, start. It just kind of turned into that.

Zida  21:24  
That's correct, yeah. So the art bonding with you. We originally designed that exhibition as a hybrid one, because we know what we wanted. We want to, we want to put it online, and we also had a space to display everything in person, and yeah, I did not, yeah, that was totally like a intentionally hybrid, but for art only a part together, sorry, the part together, that was a little bit weird, because originally we planned everything In person, and then in we started planning the art apart together in like late January, early February, 2020, and unfortunately, during around this year of 2020, March, 2020, of course, covid happened. And then originally, FSU announced, like a, do not come back after Spring Break. We then need to become like extension, endless, endless extension of spring break. Yeah, it's kind of like Spring Break plus all year, year long, spring break, yeah. And then, oh, what are going to do with the show? We were confirmed with artists, and we were already planned, the floor plan where to place those works. And because the those two, like different artworks will be artworks will be displayed at like a different location. So we have, like a two separate venues for a part together, because our our Skype new our Skype project would be displayed at the the FSU museum Fine Arts Lower Gallery, and then the other artist, her name is Daniela Klebes. Her work will be displayed at a WJB Gallery. It's kind of the, if I have to find the example that you you may be similar ways would be kind of like the Donna Beam and the Marjorie Barrick. It's kind of like walk. It's like a five minutes walk, but still on campus, but both gallery spaces run by the FSU museum of fine arts. So we are we even designed the location, the arrows, those tiny arrows to point the art, the audience to find, the artworks, to do between different galleries. But then we had to redesign everything, rethink everything, because of the covid, and then, because I am super active on online, like in digital exhibitions, I was like, Oh, should we just do this online? So we then, at that time, I just used that. I put everything online. I just, it's kind of like making a block. It's just, I use the wix.com and put everything online. And then, interestingly, I know Florida never had a masks order at all. So in, in like, yeah, in the late summer of 2020, my professor, Dr Anne Rowsen Love she told us, oh, actually, you know what, we will reopen. The university will reopen. And the student students, they can choose either to take classes online or. They can choose to be in person, which that being said that the museum fires at FSU will be reopened too. So in that case, we were like, Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. So we just planned everything we had to transform everything from in person to purely online, then QA, online, plus on site. Oh my gosh, bouncing. That's the origin. That's kind of how everything originated. Okay, hybrid, yeah, so, like a passive hybrid.

Deanne Sole  25:35  
That's that's really interesting. So you, you moved from that experience to a more sort of detailed and advanced idea of hybrid exhibitions. So it became really deliberate. Yes, you know, to the point that you're, you know, writing very serious essays about it. You're teaching other people how to make. 

Zida  25:55  
Yes, that's a real hybrid sometimes, because, as a researchers, I sometimes see as a privilege to summarize and conclude some, some, I will say, not behaviors, just something that I noticed. I've noticed what I observed. It's like the for example, in my book, I mentioned that the unintentional hybrid, hybrid and intentionally hybrid, because I saw the differences, and I kind of want to put it into a framework and see if anyone in the future, any other museums or any curators educators that when they were planning the similar thing, or They were if they are ever encountering with the similar situations, how they could better navigate themselves, it's kind of like, yeah, it's like from theory to practice, and of course, diversity from practice to theory, that is, I Think that's the privilege worth something a responsibility for scholars, you what way where you need to do it's like, yeah, you need to summarize something. So when some other practitioners, when they need help, maybe intentionally, they were looking, seeking, for help, what they they were just browsing, okay, what I can do with this. Let me put it online, and then they've made they may well be able to see, okay, yeah, somebody mentioned that, yeah, see if that would be useful for my it could be a useful tool where it could be a potentially framework I can apply to my show. Yeah, that's many things that just started in that way.

Deanne Sole  27:40  
That's fantastic. So this is potentially going to build into a really interesting, potentially worldwide body of exhibitions, a method of making exhibitions that is something very flexible, something that museums all over the place can use, as long as they have access to some sort of digital way of presenting as well as a physical space, they can create this hybrid exhibition that potentially people in other parts of the world can also connect to and also take part in. That's correct. That sounds like one of the really exciting things about it is that you could have this hybrid exhibition in Florida, for example, and I, here in Las Vegas, depending on the exhibition, could contribute. That's fantastic. Okay, yeah. I mean, I may be misrepresenting what you were saying, but you you're totally good. Yeah, cool. I think we're almost out of time. So thank you so much for being with me here today, Zida, at the museum. Our exhibitions will end, by the way, on June 13, so please come and visit us before then, if you'd like to see them, thanks so much. Okay, thank you all.

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