Laurie Cassidy ’02 has seen many exhibitions come and go at the Daura Gallery. Now, she has created one of her own.
Ghosts opened in the Daura Gallery on June 1, and it will be displayed until the end of the month. Laurie, the administrative assistant for the gallery as well as the art and theatre departments, curated the show as her final project to earn a certificate in museum management through the Virginia Association of Museums.
The exhibition features 27 images with a ghostly feel. Barbara Rothermel, director of the Daura Gallery, suggested that Laurie sample pieces from a group of 75 photos that had been donated to the gallery. One of the first ones Laurie chose featured people walking around in rain coats at Niagra Falls. The blurry nature of the photo made her think of ghosts. She noticed a similar feeling in other photos. “The more I looked at it, the more I realized there were ghostly images, depending on your definition of ghosts,” she said.
Some photos in the exhibition look like they have ghosts in the picture, while others evoke thoughts of ghosts from a person’s past. She enjoyed the creative aspect of selecting images for the exhibition, but she had to push herself to craft a curator’s statement that exhibited everything she wanted to convey about the collection. “It was an amazingly fun thing. And also stressful,” she said.
Laurie began working on her certificate in museum management about three years ago at Dr. Rothermel’s encouragement. She has taken 10 classes from the Virginia Association of Museums. With the exhibition complete, she will finalize paperwork for the certificate.
She said Ghosts is the culmination of all that she has learned in her museum management classes, as well as from her work with Dr. Rothermel. “Barbara has always been very supportive of me going to seminars for things we could use at the gallery,” Laurie said. “It’s wonderful to have a boss who supports you and lets you do things outside of the office to gain more knowledge.”
