Hannah Rothbard, Curator & Artist

Hannah Rothbard is the director and curator at 81 Leonard Gallery, an artist-run gallery space in Tribeca focused on showcasing work by up-and-coming artists. When she isn’t at 81 Leonard, she’s working on her own art at her studio space in East Williamsburg.

Introduce yourself!

I’m Hannah Rothbard. I’m the director at 81 Leonard Gallery in Tribeca. We’re an artist-run space owned by Nancy Pantirer. It’s her studio in the back and a gallery in the front. So we’re very much artist-run, supporting artists and their visions. We’re working mostly with emerging artists. We’ve worked with Abby and Rachelle before, who are in this booth, and we want to give people a platform for their wildest ideas and make it happen. Hang work from the ceiling, make site-specific work. That’s what we’re about.

That’s awesome! What’s important about site-specific work? Why does that resonate with you?

Well, the first thing that comes to mind is, and I say this also as an artist, that I love an assignment, and I find a lot of artists love an assignment. Abby Chaney, whose work we’re showing, is definitely one of those. The first time we showed her work in our space, she had been making this kind of “totem-like work,” she was calling it. And then she saw our space, saw the column that runs through the middle of it, and was like, “Oh my God, my work is columns.” And so she made this site-specific installation of this column-like work. So it’s always fun for the artists to have an assignment and also to see how responding to a space or a site can actually affect your practice and change the way you think.

Totally. Spaces carry so much memory. It’s cool to work within that. What’s your process for curating in a space like this? What are you looking for? What are you thinking about?

Well, what’s interesting is that we did not know what space we were getting until a few weeks before. Knowing it was a warehouse, we were thinking about how we could embrace the vibe but also make it very professional looking. We decided to have these floating walls, which present a really clean way to show the work. You can walk around it and see both sides of it. So, for Rochelle’s work, which is 3D wall-mounted, you can see it and walk around it on both sides. And it is in dialogue with Abby’s work, which you can actually see through. We wanted to make it flow and create different viewpoints, not obstruct anything. I think that’s what’s exciting. You can see through spaces, see through the sides of the floating walls; everything feels really open and airy, which is nice with this giant window and the warehouse.

I think you did a really beautiful job. I love the way that the light comes through this piece. What’s your art? You said you’re an artist.

I work with mixed media, collage painting. So I do a lot of collaging, thinking about the process of collage in relation to diasporic arts and thinking about Jewish culture as a collage itself. Cutting things up, putting them back together is essentially diasporic, and thinking about how you can reimagine things through material. I work with a lot of paper, transforming it, cutting things up, putting them back together, reimagining things. And the product is these collage paintings. Recently, I’ve been working more with actually making my own paper using paper pulp and embedding collages and other materials into the paper.

“Hot Date” by Hannah Rothbard

Do you think that your identity as an artist and art influences the way that you think about curation?

Yes, definitely. Like I said, Nancy and I are both artists, so our vision for the space is very much driven by our identity as artists. And that’s where our spirit for supporting artist ideas and really just art for art’s sake comes from. Whatever you have in mind, we want to make it happen. Sometimes it requires a lot of work, but we totally want to make it happen, and we know how gratifying it is to have someone support you and make your ideas come to life. So that’s what we’re trying to be for people.

Thank you so much.