Up next... Jan DeLozier!
Thank you for your support on our first newsletter of the semester with Ginnie Murphy! We are talking with Jan DeLozier (C’16), and her story is fascinating and experiential. Enjoy!
Did you have any internships during your time at Sewanee? If so, what were they?
“After my freshman year, I worked as a Gallery Assistant at Tinney Contemporary in Nashville. I had such a lovely time there. Then, after my sophomore year I worked at Christie’s as an intern in the Interiors Department, which doesn’t exist anymore. It was amazing, and the office was in Long Island City. It wasn’t in the standard Rockefeller Center, and I worked in a warehouse and with gorgeous objects and inventory. Most of my work was preparing and cataloging for the auctions. The warehouse was near MOMA and the Whitney, so I was able to acquaint myself with those museums, as well.
“In the summer of my junior year, I interned at Anderson Ranch Arts Center, where they held an artist residency center in Snowmass, Colorado. This is a place where artists teach workshops for anyone, and it acts as a professionalization resource for artists because it's a nonprofit. There were speakers that would come. My role was in development and donor relations, as well as working with live events such as weekly auctions and summer series where artists came and spoke about their practices and presented new works.”
What made you decide to major in Art History?
“I chose this major for the thrill. I wanted to connect with a piece of art, whether it was projected on the screen or I was reading about it or seeing it in real life. I felt like it was a discipline that gave me the strongest vocabulary and actual tools to be able to describe and deliver information, more so than any other discipline. I, also, found that the classes were familiar, in the sense that I could learn from one course and bring it to another one. The major really builds on itself.”
What was your favorite art history course you took at Sewanee?
“The first class I took was the Survey of Western Art. I found out how important it was to be rigorous with the information you know, the provenance, the materials and their sources, and extra information. I really enjoyed learning about that, and the Survey course demonstrated that.
“Also, I loved the senior seminar. It was a culmination of everything we’d learned and we could exemplify the tools we’d been taught all four years and put it into our own work. We had the opportunity to explore our own interests, communicate them clearly, be detailed, and convince people of something interesting or groundbreaking.”
Where did you go after graduating? What’s your story postgrad?
“Almost immediately after graduating from Sewanee, I received the Beacon scholarship that I had applied for while still at Sewanee. It was in Chicago, and I was a summer scholar at the University of Chicago at the Booth School of Business. I had an interest in understanding the financial mechanics and marketing toolbox that are often synonymous within art platforms. At the time, there was still a break between what is considered an art platform and now what is considered a brand. There wasn’t much differentiation between the two, and I had a growing interest in the topic.
“Then, I went to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and had an internship there. I had previously studied Italian at Sewanee and had hoped to get a minor in it. As a fun fact, I started the Italian house at Sewanee! I lived in Italy during my senior year of high school, which I think helped me get the internship. While I was there, I worked on public programming, research and seminars, and helped write rubrics and outlines for an artist residency.
“After that, I went to the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. I became familiar with the artists in their collection during my time at the Guggenheim. I moved from Venice, Italy to a high prairie desert in Texas, and it was such an important shift in my life in how I viewed the engagement with art and its institutions. From this move, I realized how holistic art institutions need to be. Rather than just events or public programming spaces, there needs to be groundedness.
“I thought of going back to grad school, so I need time to get my applications together. I joined Americorps, volunteered at Sequoia & Kings National Park, and did public programming and artist workshops in the park. There was a dense amount of botany and writing, where I had blooming interests. I ended up completing grad school at UCLA, and have been in LA ever since.
“I was doing a lot of work in archives and libraries and museums in LA. Primarily, I researched at the Getty doing some of the first analyses on some works that had not been looked at before. I taught a variety of classes at UCLA while I got my Master’s degree in the Italian department. After my Masters, I taught an Italian literature class at Pepperdine.
“About a year ago, I left the academic world to start working for Google as a Content Analyst. This role requires a lot of attention to detail and communication skills. I am no longer fully employed by an art institution or museum. This has given me time to pick up some of the goals and motivations I had when I left Sewanee. I have previously published in some journals and still enjoy writing, outside of Google. It is nice to have a creative outlet that can be something you do not do full-time.”
If you had to give one piece of advice to your college self, what would it be?
“Give yourself time. Keep things fresh by working in a new field or new place or pursuing a new degree. You will have time as long as you are pursuing what feels authentic to you. That doesn’t mean you need to have no expectations about what to accomplish, but it means you have time to accomplish those things. Everything comes at the perfect time.
“Sewanee is such a community. You are your community. At Sewanee, this feels like a no-brainer. It's the same thing when you graduate. Hold onto your community that you’ve established. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable and connect with others that fulfill those same spots for you.”
What’s your favorite museum/ gallery/ exhibit/ work of art you’ve seen recently?
“I recently saw a tea service made of silver and walnut at the Huntington Library in LA. Then another piece that was more untraditional was by Refik Anadol called Machine Hallucinations, Nature Dreams. It was a size-specific massive photographic dataset that created machine-generated video works. It was one of the first pieces that I saw during the lockdown for COVID. It was a nice reminder to seek out works of art during that time.”
How has your art history major helped you in your daily life?
“My art history major has kept me interested in the process of things. Whether it's the process of how things are made, which is a dying art in and of itself, or even the process of artwork of a table and a chair. It is interesting to see aspects of your daily life as art and its function. It is really important in my own space and something that keeps me grounded in a world that is a little too quick to go to Ikea. When you study the impact and value of art throughout time, you are going to make very considerate choices for yourself. It is very personal.”
Thank you, Jan for sharing your time after Sewanee with us! If you are interested in hearing more from Jan, don’t hesitate to reach out! Be on the lookout for our newsletter next week with Chloe Post (C’16).