CHIEF CURATOR. Namita Gupta Wiggers began her duties as the director and chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Craft this summer. (Photo/Scott Wiggers)

From The Asian Reporter, V22, #17 (September 3, 2012), page 15.

By Josephine Bridges

The Asian Reporter

I like the constancy of change," says Namita Gupta Wiggers, the newly appointed director and chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Craft (MoCC). Curator at MoCC since 2004, and associated with the museum as a jeweler since 1999, Namita has clearly found constancy there. But in the two months she’s held her new position, she has found plenty of change, too. She seems right where she belongs.

Born in Cincinnati, Gupta Wiggers is the daughter of an Indian father from Calcutta and a mother from Pune. "Being Indian has always been very important to me," she says. "When you come to the states, your rich history is invisible. It becomes a very challenging thing." She allows that her ethnic and cultural background is "not yet relevant" to her work at the museum, but she puts unmistakable emphasis on the word "yet."

Namita’s experience with museums goes way back beyond what’s listed on her résumé. She remembers how the Cincinnati Art Museum smelled when she was six years old. She remembers that, when her family was living in New Jersey, her mother drove new immigrants around New York City and used the city’s museums as "a portal to understand culture in the U.S." And she remembers spending hours at the Menil Collection in Houston, reading about works of art as she sat in front of them.

"It’s a privilege to get to be physically near a real object, as opposed to on the internet or in a book," she explains. "Objects catch you off guard, make you step out of yourself. That proximity is why I work in museums."

In her previous position at the museum, Gupta Wiggers curated five exhibits a year, bringing in collaborators on specific projects. Now that she will oversee the museum both "overall and in integrated partnership with the Pacific Northwest College of Art" (PNCA), she will still supervise the exhibition program, but two new colleagues will curate two shows a year each, leaving one for her. "Museum-goers will see multiple perspectives, hear from multiple voices," she says.

What does the future at MoCC look like? "Right now, we have an opportunity to redefine the role of the museum in the next century," says Gupta Wiggers, moving between a more passive attitude she calls "feed me" to a more active approach she characterizes as "I want to select what I want to take away from this museum." She allows that it is possible to address both relationships with the museum, but "not everything will be relevant to everyone, and museum-goers have to meet us halfway."

Brought on board as curator in 2004 in part to help shape the transition from the museum’s original home on S.W. Corbett Street, Namita is keenly sensitive to the importance of location. "How to be a relevant museum in a small city" is one of the questions she plans to answer, and she also perceives the museum’s location on the edge of Chinatown as part of its identity.

Don’t be surprised if Gupta Wiggers takes a chance or two as she helps propel MoCC forward. "I admire people who are willing to take risks, try something new that shapes the future, rather than let the future happen to them." She is particularly excited about the idea of "a museum that functions as a laboratory," thanks to the partnership of MoCC and PNCA.

Asked what was important to her that our readers know, Gupta Wiggers answered swiftly and surely. "The Museum of Contemporary Craft is here for the community, a resource for people to come and be inspired, provoked, and made aware of the breadth of human creativity, and to see your own place in this."

MoCC is located at 724 N.W. Davis Street in Portland. To learn more, call (503) 223-2654 or visit <www.museumofcontemporarycraft.org>.