Profile

Judy Stubbs is the Pamela Buell Curator of Asian Art at the Indiana University Art Museum (IUAM). She received a Ph.D. in East Asian art history in 1993 from the University of Chicago where her major was in Japanese art history and her minor was in early Buddhist sculpture in India and China. She spent a brief period of time in Bloomington in 1993 when she taught for a semester as a sabbatical replacement for Susan Nelson (EALC/FINA) in Asian art history. Afterwards, she worked at the East Asian Studies Center until she obtained a tenure-track teaching position at the University of Utah.

After teaching art history at the University of Utah for eight years, she began her job as curator at IUAM in 2002. Although she had acted as an informal consultant on East Asian art at the University of Utah, she had never before acted as a curator, and her training has been a process of on-the-job learning with assistance from a supportive museum staff. She is grateful to have found a job that fits both her skills and her interests—a job that keeps her active and offers a wide variety of tasks, that allows her to interact with wonderful art objects, and that gives her the opportunity to teach an undergraduate or graduate seminar every three semesters. She also enjoys writing for a general audience, such as writing museum labels and other explanatory texts, which entails explaining very complicated subjects in simple, short formats.

Aside from the Asian art collection that is on permanent display, the museum has approximately one thousand Japanese prints in storage. While most of the sculptures are on continuous display, works on paper and silk must be rotated every three months in order to protect them from being damaged by sunlight and hanging. One part of her job that Stubbs finds especially rewarding is giving tours of the Asian collection and leading special behind-the-scenes tours. She also offers showings of art for specific educational or professional needs. For information on using this service, please see the contact information listed below.

This fall, her newest show, Conspiring with Tradition: Contemporary Painting from the Guilin Chinese Painting Academy , will open in the Special Exhibitions Gallery and run from September 30 to December 17. The genesis of this show illustrates the often unexpected ways in which exhibits are created. The idea came from a cocktail party held by a friend of her mother last year. Asked if she had ever seen the Chinese collection of an art collector named Herman Mast, she arranged to view the collection which in turn inspired her to contact the members of the Guilin Chinese Painting Academy, a group of artists ranging from age twenty to ninety-two who had banded together in the 1990s for mutual support and funding advantages. The group has had exhibits in Japan and throughout Asia, but the Bloomington show will be its first exhibit in the United States. About a dozen of the artists plan to attend the opening. Stubbs will follow Conspiring with Tradition with another East Asian show in 2007, an exhibit of modern Japanese prints from local Bloomington collections.

Indiana University Art Museum

Location: 1133 East Seventh Street

Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Sunday 12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Contact: 855-5445 iuam@indiana.edu

Tours : 855-1045

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