Bailey Harberg Placzek, BA: Art History & Visual Art: Painting '08

Q: When did you graduate from KU, and what was your Major/Minor?
"I graduated from KU in 2008 with a BA in History of Art from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, as well as a BA in Art from the School of Visual Art with an emphasis in Painting."

Q: What have you been up to post-graduation?
"Wow, I can’t believe it’s already been almost twenty years! I spent the year after graduation interning and working at a couple of Museums in the Fort Worth area while I applied for graduate school. I received my MA in Art History at the University of Denver in 2011, where I participated in a work study program working with their university art collection. I also began interning with the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver in April 2011, which hadn’t even opened yet. Soon after the Museum opened in Fall 2011, they hired me as their inaugural collections manager. I was responsible for inventorying, cataloging, and researching the Museum’s art collection for the first time, which consists of about 93% of everything that American abstract expressionist Clyfford Still made in his lifetime. 

I began curating at the Museum in 2015, and in 2018, after we unrolled and inventoried the collection’s last painting, we officially launched the artist’s catalogue raisonné project. I have acted as the catalogue raisonné’s research and project manager ever since—researching each object’s provenance, exhibition, and publication histories, and connections across the artist’s oeuvre. I also continue to actively curate exhibitions for the Museum to facilitate new understanding and ways of engaging with Still's work. Here are some links to some of my most recent projects, Still in Sound, and Tell Clyfford I Said “Hi”: An Exhibition Curated by Children of the Colville Confederated Tribes, which I co-curated with sound artists and kids (which was so fun)."

I have tried to maintain an art practice over the years, but with a family (husband, two kids + a crazy German Shorthair Pointer) and a full-time Museum job, it has looked like a lot of different things. Sometimes, it’s painting watercolor works on paper, wall murals, or commissions for custom wedding invitations and calligraphy, and other times it’s making Halloween costumes or sketching on my phone for five minutes in the grocery store parking lot. I hope know I will find my way back to it one day. 

Q: What would you like to share with current and future Visual Art students?
"It sounds cliché, but soak up and take advantage of every second of your studio classes. It is an invaluable time in your life when you not only have the space, resources, and time to consistently and deliberately focus on developing your practice and trying new techniques, but you also have peers to bounce ideas off of and thoughtfully critique your work. I often wistfully think back on that time as the one time in my life when my art was rapidly progressing and changing in unexpected and new ways, and it’s because I had all those 4-hour studio classes and support from my professors and peers! Finding a community like that post-university is critical to continuing the momentum if that’s the track you want to take. Also, you never know how you will end up using your studio education—my background in painting and fine art has really helped me in my Museum job—I have such insider appreciation for Clyfford Still’s process that I draw on every day."