Corinne Erni Joins Parrish Art Museum

[caption id="attachment_55017" align="alignnone" width="700"] Corrine Erni.[/caption]

By Michelle Trauring

Before Corinne Erni even stepped foot through the blackened wooden doors of the Parrish Art Museum on September 1—marking her first day as curator of special projects for the Water Mill institution—she knew she would feel right at home.

If for no other reason than the building itself.

The sheer fact that it was designed by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron turned the heads of European art aficionados everywhere, the Swiss-born curator said during a recent interview, including her own—not to mention her 20-plus years in art programming, most recently at the New Museum in Manhattan.

"I think it's a great moment to join the Parrish, which I highly esteem for its exquisite exhibitions and innovative programs," she said. "I believe this is a pivotal moment for the Parrish to connect the East End to an international arts community, and I am very excited to be part of shaping this momentum."

Ms. Erni grew up in the countryside of central Switzerland, which can be "boring" for a young child, she said, though it gave her the freedom to dream, imagine and create her own reality. It was around this time she realized she gravitated toward the arts, from the moment she could perceive the world, she said, whether it was the museums, concerts or performances she saw, or everyday life.

"I feel that I always saw the world from a different lens than most people around me—a heightened sensibility," she said. "My father, who was an architect, loved drawing and he taught me the craft because he sensed my interest and hoped I'd become an architect."

Instead, she used fashion as a creative outlet, designing for theater, dance and film in Switzerland and Italy, and, later, for Morgane Le Fay in Soho.

"Fashion is a creative process where you convey an attitude and make a statement. It has personal, as well as social, connotations. I always loved that part of fashion and I think, back then, art and fashion were closely connected. Artists and designers used to hang out together and echo each other," she said. "However, I was increasingly missing the mental stimulation and I just wasn't business oriented, which you have to be in the fashion industry. I was increasingly drawn to the arts so I could explore more deeply the convergence of intellectual concepts and material processes."

She followed her intuition—"which is always right," she said—and got back to basics, a full circle to the art, creativity and fantasy that made her tick as a child. With new life experiences informing her work, she settled into her digs at the New Museum in Manhattan in 2010, spearheading what would become her piece de resistance, "IDEAS CITY,” a collaborative arts initiative that merged site-specific art installations, festivals, conferences and workshops.

“‘IDEAS CITY’ triggered a momentum in downtown Manhattan and connected its arts community to a larger international discourse,” she said, and added, “It was just magnificent how the neighborhood pulled together. You could feel that there was a desire to shape our own environment. So many contacts and networks were created and new collaborations grew out of the festivals.”

Looking forward, the Parrish could be a place for such a project, she said, but in the immediate future, her attention is focused on the recurring Artists Choose Artists series, which opens October 30, and creating a lab to help local and international artists collaborate with one another and other disciplines.

“Another premise I find interesting in this area is architecture and its relationship to art,” she said. “I would like to expand the dialogue between these two disciplines, how they overlap and influence each other—a theme that is well suited for the Parrish and its relatively new building by a leading international firm that has a deliberate local connection.”

As it exists, the Parrish is on par with leading museums nationwide, she said, with a solid reputation and gaining momentum that can also be seen on an international scale.

"I can speak from the European perspective, where many art aficionados initially got interested in the Parrish because of its new architecture by an internationally renowned European firm," she said. "But these very people are now also looking more closely to its programming and consider a trip to the East End when visiting New York."

Ms. Erni said she is interested in “expressions of creativity and interaction, whatever or however they manifest themselves,” and that those are the projects that move her. She thrives on the stories of others, she said, and finds art and beauty in people from different walks of life coming together to form ideas, through both guided and spontaneous interactions.

"The arts always reflect what's going on in the 'real' world. Artists are seismographs of the zeitgeist," she said. "There is currently a certain cynicism in the art market that can't be denied, reflecting the widening inequalities of the world we live in."

Recent exhibitions tackling themes such as gender, ecology and migration are the future, she said, and plans to develop cross-disciplinary projects at the Parrish addressing climate change that involve not only artists but scientists, technologists, biologists, farmers and fishermen. Her platform for art and climate change that she co-founded 10 years ago, “ARTPORT_making waves,” also contributed to this dialogue.

"Climate change is an issue that is already affecting the East End, like many other coastal areas, and will be here to stay," she said. "One thing that struck me in my work with ‘ARTPORT_making waves’ is how eager scientists are to work with artists, in order to find a voice and get their message across, which is hard to achieve with dry reports."

As much as it takes a project, or specific artist, to inspire her, the bulk boils down to the institution itself, Ms. Erni explained, as well as mutual respect, curiosity and trust.

“Although I haven’t officially started yet, I feel that with the Parrish, we can develop a very prolific relationship,” she said. “I have a lot of admiration and respect for the museum and I feel an openness to experiment and growing the institution—which, in reverse, will allow me to grow.”