Kathleen Goncharov, an artist and curator who worked at influential US organisations including the pioneering New York gallery Just Above Midtown and the public art non-profit Creative Time, died on 31 December at age 73.
Goncharov had most recently been the senior curator at the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida, where she worked from 2012 until her retirement last year. She previously held curatorial positions at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in North Carolina, the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Massachusetts and the New School university in New York. She was also the commissioner of the US Pavilion at the 2003 Venice Biennale, working with the artist Fred Wilson on his solo project Speak of Me As I Am. In 2022, she had a solo exhibition of her wildly polychromatic and exactingly rendered abstract paintings at the New York gallery Olympia.
“Kathy lived art in every direction. She curated from the inside out. She was also a great artist,” says the artist Tony Oursler, whose work Goncharov curated more than once. “This gave her a great sensitivity to process, possibilities, risk-taking and the nature of the beast. Her passion for curating went beyond juxtaposition: she loved the alchemical process of production, helping many of us realise our dreams.”
Goncharov was born in 1952 in Monroe, Michigan, and earned degrees from both Central Michigan University and the University of Michigan. She started out working for Linda Good Bryant at Just Above Midtown, which championed predominantly Black artists who were not receiving support from mainstream commercial galleries and institutions.
“I have known Kathy for years and I have felt her support through decades of making sculpture,” says the artist Maren Hassenger. “Kathy gave unique support and attention to artists and helped me realise projects in a range of venues from public installations and performances in the early 1980s, to a 2019 exhibition at Boca Raton Museum of Art made collaboratively with local audiences. Kathy always remained open to the possibilities.”
Kathleen Goncharov with her work at Olympia gallery in New York in 2022 Courtesy Olympia
At the Boca Raton Museum of Art, Goncharov curated many exhibitions including multiple editions of the Glasstress series of shows, focused on contemporary glass art; solo exhibitions by Oursler, Hassenger and Shirin Neshat; and influential thematic exhibitions on comic books (Beyond the Cape! Comics and Contemporary Art, 2019), magic and illusion (Smoke and Mirrors: Magical Thinking in Contemporary Art, 2023-24) and more.
“Kathy looked at art and curated her exhibitions based on what the artists were saying through their work—instead of what so many curators are often doing, which is to convey what they think and then try to fit the artist into their vision,” says the artist Petah Coyne, who worked with Goncharov on multiple projects including the 2017 edition of Glasstress.
Coyne adds: “And often, the viewer would end up feeling like they actually had a conversation with the artist. This happened to me. When my work was shown by Kathy, years later people would meet me and they would say to me, ‘Oh yes, I’ve spoken with you before,’ but I had never met them. Then they would tell me they saw one of my works in a show Kathy curated and that they felt like they spoke to me through their conversation with my work there.”
During a walkthrough of Art Basel Miami Beach with The Art Newspaper in 2021, Goncharov’s indefatigable curiosity and vast expertise were on full display. She reminisced about a poignant 2007 exhibition of work by David Hammons, praised artists like Rodney Graham and Zanele Muholi for trying their hands at media they are not known for, and delighted at learning about the Brazilian sculptor Marcelo Silveira. Examining his work, she said: “This piece is pretty stunning, and he’s an artist I’ve never heard of, so that’s a good thing.”
