In this episode of Creative Guts, co-hosts Laura Harper Lake and Sarah Wrightsman sit down with Jordana Pomeroy, the director and CEO of the Currier Museum of Art. An art historian, author, and curator, Jordana started at the Currier in September 2024. In this episode, we’ll chat about Jordana’s career at the Museum of Modern Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and more. Jordana shares what brought her to New Hampshire (spoiler alert: it was the Currier!) and how she thinks about the future of the Currier. We’ll also chat about Jordana’s book, the young adult novel titled Daring: The Life and Art of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun. Listen to this episode wherever you listen to podcasts or on our website www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Discord. Creative Guts recently moved our newsletter to Substack, and you can find us at creativegutspod.substack.com. If you love listening, consider making a donation to Creative Guts! Our budget is tiny, so donations of any size make a big difference. Learn more about us and make a tax deductible donation at www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Thank you to our friends at Art Up Front Street Studios and Gallery in Exeter, NH and the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts in Rochester, NH for their support of the show!
In this episode of Creative Guts, co-hosts Laura Harper Lake and Sarah Wrightsman sit down with Jordana Pomeroy, the director and CEO of the Currier Museum of Art. An art historian, author, and curator, Jordana started at the Currier in September 2024.
In this episode, we’ll chat about Jordana’s career at the Museum of Modern Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and more. Jordana shares what brought her to New Hampshire (spoiler alert: it was the Currier!) and how she thinks about the future of the Currier. We’ll also chat about Jordana’s book, the young adult novel titled Daring: The Life and Art of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun.
Listen to this episode wherever you listen to podcasts or on our website www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Discord. Creative Guts recently moved our newsletter to Substack, and you can find us at creativegutspod.substack.com.
If you love listening, consider making a donation to Creative Guts! Our budget is tiny, so donations of any size make a big difference. Learn more about us and make a tax deductible donation at www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com.
Thank you to our friends at Art Up Front Street Studios and Gallery in Exeter, NH and the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts in Rochester, NH for their support of the show!
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:00] LHL: I'm Laura Harper Lake.
[0:00:01] SW: And I'm Sarah Wrightsman.
[0:00:02] LHL & SW: And you're listening to Creative Guts.
[0:00:18] SW: Hello, friends. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Creative Guts.
[0:00:21] LHL: On today's episode, we're talking with Jordana Pomeroy, the Director and CEO of the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire. What's extra special is the 2025 Tiny Art Exchange and Companion Zine that Creative Guts put on this year was only possible with the support from the Currier Museum. We are so excited to have worked with them, and really excited to talk with Jordana.
[0:00:46] SW: We're going to hop right into this episode of Creative Guts with Jordana Pomeroy.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:54] LHL: Jordana, thank you so much for being on Creative Guts.
[0:00:56] JP: Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.
[0:00:58] LHL: I think a lot of our listeners probably know the Currier Museum of Art, but for maybe some that are listening who don't, and for some who are not familiar with you, can you share a little outline of the Currier Museum and yourself as a creative?
[0:01:13] JP: Oh, I'd love to. The Currier Museum of Art is the only public art museum in New Hampshire. We were founded almost a hundred years ago, October 1929, which was not an auspicious time to create anything, but that shows you how resilient we are. Almost 100 years we are here. We've expanded twice. So much larger than the original building. And we have free days. We have art off the walls every month. So, we have a lot of opportunity to come visit us and take part in what we do.
I've been here now more than a year. I came in fall of 2024 from Miami. And that got a lot of people raising their eyebrows, like, "He came from Miami to Manchester, New Hampshire." And I came because of this museum. This museum and this community are really special. There's, I think, sort of a large city feel to Manchester, but it also feels like a small town at times.
The museum is not a small local museum, but very much a regional powerhouse. And a museum I had heard of, and this is one of our sort of complex challenges, is I had heard of the Currier. Currier has a great reputation. But down the street, some people don't know about the Currier. That's something we're trying to work out. How do you get the Currier's name out? And I think a lot of it has to do with the quality of our programming and also our education programming.
[0:02:48] LHL: Excellent.
[0:02:49] SW: Will you tell us a little bit more about you as a person? Are you a practicing creative? Can you tell us about your background?
[0:02:55] JP: Absolutely. I came into this in a very kind of straight and narrow way, really. My undergraduate career was based in art history. I mean, I was an art history major, Italian minor. And other than a very brief foray in law school. Yes. No, that was not for me. I actually dropped out of law school and worked for an art dealer and just applied to graduate school. I knew that I had this pull. I wanted to work in the arts. I wanted to work in museums specifically.
So, I enrolled at Columbia University. I was in New York. I had an apartment. I wasn't going to leave, mostly because of that apartment. And I liked Columbia. I wanted to pursue my masters. And once I was there, it sort of became clear to me that a PhD would be a good thing to have if I could stick it out, which I did.
And I'm very grateful to those who kept me in graduate school. But it was a very, very – it's kind of when I really started to think in a different way as an art historian, and debating between becoming an art historian and teaching and working in museums. But I went with my first love, which is working in the museum world.
While I was at Columbia, being a good academic, I also worked in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the American Wing, where I would have done anything. And that was a magical experience, truly. I got to work 12 hours a week in the American Wing doing everything from polishing silver to helping with an editor who worked in-house in the American Wing. And kind of just doing everything, seeing everything from that angle.
I did manage to get my doctorate. And then I didn't know what I was going to do because there aren't a million jobs, as you can imagine, as curator. And this is a true story. I was taking the newspaper back when we had newspapers out, and I looked in the classified ads, and I saw an advertisement for a curator, which was bizarre. I thought, "Really? They're advertising in the Washington Post for a curator?" Because I was in DC at the time.
And I called, and that was my first encounter with the National Museum of Women in the Arts. And I ended up spending most of my career there for 16 years. I was in DC at the Women's Museum. And then I decided I wanted to run a museum. And that was an entirely different shift in my career to basically going into management. And I took a course that was incredible for curators who wanted to become directors. And that was a very nice kind of introduction into the world of running an institution instead of working as a curator, which is you're the content provider.
I will say that the women's museum was a very good place to start. The mission was important to me and it was still a very young museum. So it wasn't like walking into the Smithsonian where you're very much pigeonholed. You really did everything at the Women's Museum. You wrote your own press releases. You were doing your own fundraising, your own grant writing. So as hard as that was, I became seasoned, a seasoned museum professional, which I think I probably influenced my decision to start running museums. And I've not looked back. It's been a great career.
[0:06:13] SW: That's amazing.
[0:06:15] JP: Yeah.
[0:06:15] SW: Probably won't surprise you to hear that one of our questions was going to be about why you came to New Hampshire. So, it's lovely that it was for this.
[0:06:22] JP: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[0:06:25] SW: Are you – and I want to be careful not to put you in a box, but do you consider yourself an artist?
[0:06:30] JP: No, not at all. And don't worry about boxes. No. I don't have an artistic bone in my body, except I'm a writer.
[0:06:43] LHL: Okay. That's very creative.
[0:06:43] JP: I am a creative. It's very creative. I just don't make art. And my last job, the head of education used to always invite me to take part, to engage in one of the programs. Like, "No, no, no. I'm very busy. I cannot do any water coloring today." But she got me to do some. And I did take one course in drawing, and I loved it. And there's something that tells me eventually I'll go back to trying something like that because it absolutely, in some ways, is critical to understanding as an artist historian to be able to look at a drawing and understand how it was made. It's very different from sort of the theoretical side of things. I did like that. And it is really important. But no, I don't make art, but I do write.
[0:07:30] LHL: Well, would you love to share about your writing? Because we'd love to hear it.
[0:07:32] JP: I would love to. Well, thank you, Laura. What an opportunity. I guess I've been writing all my life, but I had this incredible opportunity at the beginning of COVID. So, I will start with the end, which is my book came out in July, and I've had a lot of wonderful colleagues reach out and their first question is, "How did you find the time?" And I'm like, "Well, COVID allowed us a little bit more time than we anticipated."
And the editor at the Getty Publications came to me and said, "She's acquiring titles around women artists in their collection." And identified me as somebody who could write about Élisabeth Vigée-LeBrun, who was an 18th century woman portraitist. And I said, "Well, I can't leave my apartment, and I can't go to Paris." And she said, "No, we really don't want that. You don't have to get into the archives." But of course, there's so much available digitally that It actually was even eye opening to me.
First, her memoir is a remarkable read. You can get it online. It's published. It's in the public realm, so you can read it in French or English. There are very good translations of it as well. But I sort of used that as a guide. And then because of JSTOR, you can get into all the articles. And it was though a labor of love. It really did take four years to produce that book. So, it just came out.
And it's written for young adults/general audience. And it's a beautifully designed book. I take no credit. That's all Getty. It's meant for people see on a shelf think, "Well, wait a minute. I've never thought about Élisabeth Vigée-LeBrun. What a great looking book." So, pick it up, buy it for somebody who's a 16-year-old.
And for me, it opened my eyes to a new kind of writing for general audience and young adults. Kind of I'll call it along the lines of accessibility. How do you talk about the things that we don't talk about as academics? How do you get into the weeds on things like hair color? Or what is she wearing? Or how did they travel?
She had a remarkable life. She exiled herself. She fled Paris after the fall of the monarchy. She had been really the painter to Queen Marie Antoinette. And Marie Antoinette, obviously, you know her fate. So, Elizabeth knew it was time to get out of town, because her life was in jeopardy. So, she took her daughter and her daughter's governess. And they went on a carriage, and they left at night, and traveled through Europe. Went all the way down to Naples.
And the story that she tells in her memoir was a story that no art historian had really told before. Art historians tend to talk about the art. They tend to talk about maybe who the sitter. I was really interested in who she was as a person, as a mother. And as somebody who was really educating herself as she left Paris. She was out of France. And she was in Italy for the first time, and seeing all the great masters.
She connected with Angelica Kauffman, who was also a very successful woman painter who was living in Rome at the time. She made money. She was truly a professional. And the education she gave her daughter was a kind of education that girls did not receive at the time. I became very enmeshed in her life. And then the works of art, the people she met. She really met a lot of interesting men and women through the odyssey that she took until she was allowed to return to France.
She was permitted back in. And even then, she was so well respected by Napoleon. And it was just a great journey that I took with her. And I wanted others to feel that when they read the book. And I've gotten a lot of really nice feedback. And I'm just thrilled with the response to the book. And it kind of gave me a new vision for the Currier.
We have a new mission, which is we bring people together by telling stories with art. And you can see the connection. This is what we want to do here. We want to use art to tell stories and not scare people off and make it feel like a drudgery to come to a museum.
[0:12:03] LHL: On the Currier, can you talk about what excites you the most about the career itself and what you've gained by working here?
[0:12:12] JP: Yeah. Well, I've been here really relatively, especially in its lifetime, a short time. What I love is the staff. The staff is remarkable and resilient. We've had some interesting issues that displaced us from our offices over the year. And very self-motivated. And I'm learning a lot from everybody I work with.
The collection is remarkable. We really do have a – what do you say? Fights above its weight class. I mean, in terms of our collection, some sort of standout stellar works. And I can name names, but Monet and Picasso, and many other artists that people have heard of and others that you may not have. But there's a kind of joy in knowing that we can acquire art of that caliber. I think that's it.
Also, I've really enjoyed the community. I'm sort of still new. And I find that everybody's very welcoming and wants to involve me. We have the New England Museum Association is meeting in Manchester. And I'm sitting on two panels. So, everywhere where I can or I'm asked to be part of something, I will give it my best to be there.
I want the Currier to be seen as an essential aspect of life here in Manchester, in New Hampshire. And we sort of struggle. Is it southern New Hampshire? Is it all New Ham – I just want us to be a seen as a major asset to New Hampshire. And, of course, in southern New Hampshire and even northern Massachusetts, a place to come to and enjoy our programs and just walking around our galleries.
[0:13:56] SW: That's beautiful. In a time when arts are being – I don't want to say under attack, but definitely underfunded and under-prioritized, can you talk about why is art so important to people and to our community?
[0:14:10] JP: Yeah, it's a very good question. I think two separate questions there. One is a lot of nonprofits are under attack in the sense of we're losing money from granting agencies is the most obvious. I think that it is incumbent on the private sector to pick up the slack.
However, I will say that this has been happening since very much since 2008. This is not new. And it is kind of a reminder that art is important to all of us no matter our wealth capacity or where we come from. It's this idea that art is available to all people. I guess we're sort of making the case here to those who can give. That when they invest in the Currier, their money is used well.
I use the word investment because that's what we are. We're an organization you are investing in. And we're not frittering it away. Obviously, we have operational costs. But none of these are going to get picked up by the state or federal government. And New Hampshire never had a lot of money in that way. In a funny way, we're not suffering from a lack of money from the state of New Hampshire. But NEA, IMLS, those federal organizations are truly diminished.
It's given us a lot of opportunity to think around strategically around what our voice should be. One is to have exhibitions that are more popular, that really bring in wider group of people. One of our most popular shows was about the artist Escher, who really was a remarkable artist. But it's it's funny, I call it like the Escher moment, when just lines around the block. It was all Escher all the way. I mean, you really do want to do a lot of this because, I mean, we want to put our boots to the ground and say we are for everyone.
But also, as I said before, the way we write labels, the kind of shows that you might not have thought you wanted to come see, we want to make them interesting. So you come in, say you came in to see Escher, but you saw this other exhibition on this artist you never heard about, and you walked out loving that artist and thinking, "I didn't know that I would learn so much or be so excited about that."
And the other part of this that's a little harder to describe is just this feeling, this tingly feeling that I want everybody to get when they walk through the front door of like, "I'm going to have an experience here. And nobody's demanding anything of me." And if I feel like just going to the shop and sitting in the winter garden and having lunch, that's good, too. If I see one work of art that really gets me excited and I want to talk about it, that's good, too. Nobody's telling me what to do here. And really, that's the experience that I feel like I learn to have in museums and I want others to have as well.
[0:17:00] LHL: I love all of that. That's amazing. And we're talking about community, and you're talking about investing. One thing that the Currier Museum of Art did recently was connect with Creative Guts in helping make our Tiny Art Exchange Zine possible this year. So, I want to give you another huge big thank you shout out.
[0:17:22] JP: Thank you. Thank you. It's all because of good creative partners like you.
[0:17:26] LHL: And so, my next question relates to that as far as connecting with the community in that way. Is this a newer initiative or something that's been going on that maybe I haven't been aware of? Or how are you reaching out to the community more?
[0:17:40] JP: We're just right now developing a strategic plan that actually talks about that as a priority, accessibility, collaboration. And I think the museum has done that in different ways. You try different things. We had a block party. We've had an artist and residence program which no longer exists, because it takes a lot of wherewithal to steward a good artist and residence. But there's been no shortage of try this and try that, and see what works and what other programs don't work so well. I would say that we'd want to stick with the ones that are working well.
Of course, it has to have a kind of be in our mission. And I think the initiatives that don't work well are the ones that haven't been thought out exactly. How does that fit in our mission? And how does that support our mission? And also, the ones that don't have a mutual benefit. Sometimes you find yourself collaborating, and then you realize, "Well, that didn't do anything for us." You know?
Working with creative people like yourself is always going to be on mission. And there's obviously a desire to support each other's organizations and ideas. But I'd say the failed initiatives are the ones that just, when you look back on it, the return wasn't sufficient to do it again.
[0:19:02] LHL: That certainly must teach you guys something. And then you keep building off of those lessons learned. And from an organization that's only six years old, it meant a lot that an organization such as this care deeply about getting local creatives together in this way and getting excited about the exchange of art in such an accessible way. Again, thank you. It really was uplifting.
[0:19:26] JP: Yeah, I'm so glad to hear that. It really means a lot. My experience in New Hampshire is that there isn't a very strong infrastructure for creatives. But there's a desire to have one. I think, I mean, that's good. And anything we can do to be that hub, I think we should do.
[0:19:44] SW: Absolutely.
[0:19:44] LHL: Very meaningful.
[0:19:45] SW: Thank you. Will you chat a little bit about the perceptions that people might have of museums and what barriers you think there are, or a reason why someone might not think that a museum is for them?
[0:19:57] JP: I'll be happy to. I mean, there's so many reasons. Over the course of my career, I think some of them are perception, and then some of them are actual. And maybe perception is actual. I once was talking with a colleague who runs – actually, I've spoken to a lot of colleagues who've run museums down south, because I did, too. And when I went as a Northerner down south, I discovered there were sort of very strong racial divides that still existed, that despite desegregation still existed, and there was a sense of that place is not meant for me. That's a very strong one. That's not going to be easily changed. Although, programming has changed and the color of the profession has changed. And I think, especially in areas, it's important to have your staff reflect the community. And there's been a sort of reckoning with that in a big way among my colleagues, especially in the southern museums.
But I took a lot of that back up here, this sense of who is our community? And that is also truly what I think has happened over the years with the Currier was it was a club. And that is a very typical thing for museums to experience. We were thought of as a club. And now we're a professional organization, we're here for the community, is not something that happens overnight.
So that sort of elite clubbiness part of things is – yeah, still hangs on pretty – it's like a veil on museum profession that I think most of the colleagues I have, we fight that. We're really doing everything say, "Yeah, well, we know that. We know that." but it's like a hundreds years worth of culture that you have to like get rid of, and it's not easy.
Well, it's happening in Europe, too. I mean, there's a lot of that sort of new ideas about. And they're getting from American museums new ideas about what the community means, and how you create more free opportunities and diversify your offerings so that different members of your community feel more like they're reflected in the programming. I think those are how museums have changed a lot, and a lot in the last decade. I mean, I've seen seismic shift in the industry, I'd say. And certainly, that continues. And our strategic plan has all of this embedded in it.
[0:22:26] LHL: Yeah. All right. Here's a real fun question. If the Currier won a ton of money. Typically, we ask this of an artist, or a writer, or an individual creative. If you won the lottery, what would your creative life and practice look like? But I'm curious, if the sky was kind of the limits, what would you envision for the Currier?
[0:22:49] JP: Oh, well, let's see. Okay, first, I'll be very nerdy. I would make some transformative changes in our budget. And I'll just leave it at that. Transformative changes. And that would mean stabilizing our budget. It would mean making a few very key hires that I can't afford to do right now. It would mean updating all our AV and bringing us very strongly into the digital world. We'd love to have all these. We all know what we like to see in museums. We should have more touch screens. We should have – and we can't afford this. So, we do what we can with some iPads. And we have a new website. And it's little by little. But I think I would just increase our capacity overall to have that faster. Yeah, and then probably some other things.
I mean, I would change the campus a little bit, the way it looks. And then, it's funny how people say, "Well, you should really have a second kind of presence down on Elm Street or downtown." Like, "Yes, this is enough to run up here." So maybe we would be able to do something like that where we could do a takeover – do something that would be visible to more people as they're coming over the bridge, and have that kind of capacity to run a sort of satellite, which might be that artist and residence, or another kind of gallery. But that's really not in our abilities right now.
[0:24:25] LHL: Love it all.
[0:24:26] SW: Yes. Yes. I'm curious. I really like when the museum expands a little bit toward the parking lot, in that courtyard area, and add some art installations out there. I know you haven't been here very long. I don't know how much of that has happened in your tenure. But I'm curious about your experience sort of expanding beyond the building a little bit.
[0:24:46] JP: We are in a neighborhood. We're really in a neighborhood. So, a lot of, I think, our fortunes sort of depend on Manchester, which is why I'm interested in sort of the larger view. And where is Manchester going? What is this neighborhood going to be? Strangely, I think a very pedestrian-friendly city, but you don't see a lot of people walking on the street. But we have sidewalks.
Miami is not a pedestrian-friendly city. I mean, you have to drive everywhere. I always felt like we're not – and it's not that big. I mean, we're not like a sprawling city. So, why can't we be more of a destination? I think we need probably some very cool art out there on the campus.
Well, one thing we have changed that's very subtle is we've cut back our shrubbery and our trees. And we're continuing to do that on a slow, as-needed basis, so that we are more visible from the curb. And I think you'll start seeing campus changes. We're putting banners on the sides of our museum. So that when you drive 80 miles an hour down beach, you might stop and say, "What is that building?" What? I had no idea. Museum?"
I think it's actually very – this is true. When I was first interviewed. And I finally drove as a stealth visitor, because I was undercover, I came up – I guess it would have been maybe orange or prospect. It doesn't matter. There's this teeny tiny sign, it says Currier Museum. And it just is a big blank facade. And it took me a moment.
Of course, we have a Mark di Suvero sculpture, which is fabulous in the front, suggesting there might be art here. But I think we definitely need more indicators and messaging that there's art inside. So, that's part of our job and part of communicating who we are is just having more of a physical presence.
[0:26:47] SW: Yeah, that's great. I could totally see opportunities to do more installation on the facade. Yes. Because I have the same impression whenever I drive up to the Currier. I'm like, "You can't really tell that you're approaching a museum until you're in the parking lot."
[0:26:58] JP: No, you can't. And I think with the changes with the city, too. I mean, one day it would be great to think that you would have some kind of art area up here or some way that you're connecting Elm Street, I'll just use Elm Street, up here. Because I'm a New York City girl, by the way. In terms of walking distance, it's actually not very far, is it? It's really just a walk, but people don't walk it. And maybe there's just no reason to walk it. As planning unfolds, that would be the ideal.
[0:27:33] LHL: So, cool.
[0:27:34] SW: Yep. That's great.
[0:27:35] LHL: So, we're about to transition into rapid-fire questions, which is how we wind down. But is there anything else you wanted to plug or mention about the Currier that we didn't touch upon?
[0:27:45] JP: Well, we do have a lot of programs. I would say get on our mailing list is really critical. Follow us on Instagram, please. Look at our website. Do follow us, get information, show up in person. We did really well on the Manchester Citywide Arts Festival. We had over 500 people here that day, which is kind of the way I'd like to see it every day all the time.
[0:28:08] LHL/SW: All the time.
[0:28:09] JP: It would be great. We have an MLK celebration, so that's great to keep your eyes open for that. We have a lot of outreach and wellness programs. And we're, I would say, pioneers in that area in the museum industry. You could look into those. And educational tours. Wonderful for kids. We're trying to get more and more schools involved. We're very active. And whatever anybody ever thought of us, you've got to take another look.
[0:28:37] LHL: Yeah. And all those links will be in our episode description, dear listener.
[0:28:41] JP: Thank you.
[0:28:42] LHL: So, now it is time for rapid-fire questions.
[0:28:45] JP: I'm ready.
[0:28:46] LHL: If you could personally own one piece of art from anywhere in the world obtained legally, I guess, which would it be, and why?
[0:28:55] JP: Oh my god.
[0:28:56] SW: That is such a good question, Laura.
[0:29:00] JP: That is a really good question. If I could own personally, or have it at the Currier?
[0:29:04] LHL: Well, the second one is what's your favorite piece of art at the Currier? I don't know. Maybe just you personally.
[0:29:11] JP: I guess I'm just going to go with Starry Night, van Gogh. I mean, I could live with that over my – looking at that just in my bedroom, maybe. Just mine alone, you know, every night.
[0:29:23] SW: Classic. It's beautiful. What is your favorite piece of art at the Currier?
[0:29:29] JP: It's a painting I just love looking at. It's by Joan Mitchell, and it's called Cous-Cous. And something about the sound of couscous. And I see this very abstract kind of – but dynamic and very obsessive work makes me think of Cous-Cous. And the name means nothing. The title really doesn't mean anything in relation to what you're seeing. But I kind of like that relationship, that lack of relationship.
[0:29:54] SW: Listeners, you're going to have to Google that.
[0:29:55] JP: Yes.
[0:29:58] LHL: What is your favorite color?
[0:29:59] JP: Green.
[0:30:01] SW: What's your favorite scent?
[0:30:03] JP: Lavender.
[0:30:04] LHL: What is your favorite sound?
[0:30:07] JP: Kids screaming for good reasons. The joyful sound.
[0:30:11] SW: The joyful screaming. Not the other screaming.
[0:30:12] JP: Yeah, not the other screaming.
[0:30:15] SW: What's your favorite texture to touch? I think for a lot of people, this is the first time they've ever been asked that question ever.
[0:30:20] LHL: Yes.
[0:30:23] JP: Oh, I like my dog's hair.
[0:30:26] LHL: That's a good one.
[0:30:26] JP: Oh, good.
[0:30:28] LHL: What is the most inspiring location you've traveled to?
[0:30:32] JP: India.
[0:30:33] LHL: Ugh, good one.
[0:30:34] SW: What's the last new thing that you've learned?
[0:30:39] JP: You know, I know it's not a quick answer, but when you move to a new location, every day there's something new to learn. I just learned there's a new diner on Elm Street, and I just had lunch there, and it was very good. Yeah.
[0:30:53] LHL: Oh, excellent. That's awesome.
[0:30:56] SW: And this is our clincher question. If you could go back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?
[0:31:02] JP: Wow. Okay. So, let's have another episode.
[0:31:07] SW: Yep.
[0:31:09] JP: Be patient. Be patient.
[0:31:12] LHL: Very good advice.
[0:31:14] SW: Very good advice.
[0:31:15] LHL: Thank you again, Jordana, for being on the show. And with that –
[0:31:18] LHL, SW, & JP: Show us your creative guts.
[OUTRO]
[0:31:26] SW: Another thank you to Jordana for taking the time to chat with us on Creative Guts.
[0:31:31] LHL: It was so lovely to interview her.
[0:31:33] SW: Yes, it totally was. We're so lucky to have her in New Hampshire, given all of her experience in the art world.
[0:31:39] LHL: I know. And it was really great to hear her story about how she came to New Hampshire.
[0:31:43] SW: And always good to be in the Currier to record an episode.
[0:31:46] LHL: Yeah. I love coming here. And it was just so wonderful to do our second interview at the Currier, because we interviewed Jozimar here as well.
[0:31:54] SW: I had totally forgotten that until we were here and setting up. And I was like, "Oh, we've done this before actually." Yeah. So, it was really great. We're lucky in New Hampshire to have the Currier. It is a really fantastic community museum in Manchester, where we have our biggest population.
[0:32:09] LHL: And with their initiatives like being a supporter of our Zine and the Tiny Art Exchange, and in other ways that they're connecting with the community and putting on programs at the Currier. It's just so wonderful to see that kind of community building and celebration around art.
[0:32:25] SW: Absolutely. In such a beautiful space. Yeah.
[0:32:27] LHL: Yeah. Jordana, thank you again for being on the show, your insight, and your wonderful thoughtfulness to our questions. We really, really appreciated your time. You can check out currier.org to learn more about them. And follow them on Facebook and Instagram, where their handle is @CurrierMuseum. As always, you can find those links and more in the episode description and on our website, creativegutspodcast.com.
[0:32:50] SW: You can also find us, of course, Creative Guts Podcast, on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Discord. If you're not on social media, but you want to stay in the know about what we're doing, join our newsletter list. We're on Substack. And you can find the link to sign up on our website.
[0:33:04] LHL: This episode is sponsored in part by the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts. Thank you to our friends in Rochester for their support of the show.
[0:33:10] SW: A big thank you to Art Up Front Street in Exeter, New Hampshire, for being a longtime supporter of Creative Guts.
[0:33:17] LHL: If you love listening and want to support Creative Guts, a small tiny nonprofit in New Hampshire, you can make a donation, leave us a review, interact with our content on social media, purchase some merch, whatever you're able to do, we appreciate you.
[0:33:31] SW: Thank you for tuning in. We'll be back next Wednesday with another episode of Creative Guts.
[END]