Meet curator Alexa Greist

The AGO recently welcomed a new curator to its ranks: Alexa Greist, Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings.

A specialist in Italian Renaissance works on paper, Alexa worked at the Yale University Art Gallery before arriving at the AGO. Born in Madison, Wis., and a graduate of Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, where she got her Ph.D. in the History of Art, Alexa is relatively new to Toronto. But don’t be shy saying hello - she speaks Italian, French, German and even some Hungarian. You can find her every Wednesday in the Marvin Gelber Print and Drawing Study Centre from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. helping visitors with their questions during the weekly free Open Door event.

We recently sat down with Alexa to get to know her.

AGO: If you had to sum up Toronto in one word what would it be?
Alexa: Diverse.

AGO: Having recently moved here, what do you love about the city? What have you discovered?
Alexa: I love all the neighborhoods and how much pride there is in the different character of each one.

The diversity of the city is reflected in many ways that I enjoy every day – food comes to mind of course -- but what I have enjoyed most is having the opportunity to explore the museums in the city, from medium specific collections at the Bata Show Museum, the Gardiner, and the Textile Museum of Canada to the encyclopedic ROM and the excellent collection at the newly opened Aga Kahn Museum.

AGO: What work in the AGO collection are you most excited by?
Alexa: The AGO collection includes a set of Goya’s biting satirical print series, Los Caprichos, with hand-colouring. I had seen many impressions of the series, but never an entire set. Hand-coloring was something that was done to prints since they first existed, yet we often think of prints as black and white. To me, the added level of evidence of "use" or ownership of these prints makes them even more alive.

AGO: What are you researching right now?
Alexa: I am currently trying to identify the subject of a 16th-century Italian drawing by Giovanni Guerra (Modena 1544 – Rome 1618). I now believe that the drawing depicts an obscure story from Roman history relating to Remus’ founding of a settlement on the Aventine Hill.

This type of research is the fun detective work part of my job and offers a chance to explore a specific question about a work in the collection. It helps me think about how to exhibit the AGO's collection in our soon-to-be reinstalled galleries devoted to prints and drawings. Uncovering the specific subject matter depicted in this drawing reveals an interesting moment of intellectual history and reception, and this allows me to relate this work to others in the collection in meaningful and sometimes surprising ways.

Stay tuned as we introduce you to other curators and AGO staff over the months to come! Click here to learn more about the Prints & Drawings collection at the AGO.