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• Eiteljorg Museum

Jennifer Complo McNutt is the curator of contemporary art at Eiteljorg Museum of American Indianas and Western art. Behind her is a painting by James Lavadour. (Photo by Danese Kenon / The Indianapolis Star)

Jennifer Complo McNutt considers the Fellowships (for Native American Fine Art) the most significant projects she's worked on. (Photo by Danese Kenon/The Indianapolis Star)

Jennifer Complo McNutt has been with the Eiteljorg Museum since 1991, two years after it opened. She started as an education assistant and eventually became curator of contemporary art.

McNutt, 50, earned a bachelor's degree in painting and drawing from Indiana University and a master's in painting from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. She then left her job with a Philadelphia after-school program to move to Indianapolis, despite being a single mother with a young son and no employment lined up.

She worked with the Indiana Arts Commission and as an assistant art professor at DePauw University in Greencastle before joining the Eiteljorg. One of her first major shows in 1995, featuring works by 13 women artists, made a lasting impression. It involved painting the gallery black, with recorded voice-overs and the skeletal remains of animals turned into bipedal puppets.

You've curated 40 exhibitions over the past 17 years. Which are you most proud of?

Well, I think that the Fellowship (for Native American Fine Art), the five fellowships that we've done, are the most significant project I've ever worked on. It's the one closest to my heart. It's the one I put the most energy into.

I really liked the whole (Roy) Lichtenstein-(Andy) Warhol exhibition. I didn't curate that, I just brought that to the Eiteljorg -- but it was really a way to tell everybody that Native American design is more than presenting in a traditional way. That was a really good exhibition and a good way to blow people's minds, which is what the contemporary program does at the Eiteljorg, because people don't expect to see that when they come.

And I would say the exhibit of the 13 women artists that I did years ago that the museum wasn't ready for, Indianapolis wasn't ready for, nobody was ready for. That was a really fun show because we did a lot of things we never tried before. We used sound, we had the gallery painted out, we were doing installation work.

Do you think if you did that same show today, Indianapolis would be a little more prepared for it?

It might even be a little passe. It is an indication that all the things that were new then are not so new now. Plus, I'm not so interested in doing exhibitions about gender. I am interested in doing exhibitions about diversity, but not just gender diversity. I do pay attention to that.

Are there special challenges in working at an institution like the Eiteljorg with a very specific mission instead of a general-interest art museum?

Oh yes, that's what my whole job is about, explaining that Native American contemporary fine.art deserves a place among American art and among the mainstream. But it also is a very young institution, and being a young institution you get a little more leeway than if you walked in a museum that's 100 years old, because you're dealing with tradition. Since I've been here so long, I'm making the tradition.

What upcoming exhibits are you working on that you think will make a particular impression?

I am going to be focusing on traveling pieces in the collection that we've developed from the Eiteljorg Fellowship. That exhibit will probably travel to Europe, as well as nationally. So what we'd like to do is let everybody know that we have the greatest collection of Native American fine art in the world. We do now ... And if we are able to travel nationally and internationally, that's going to change the way Native American fine arts maneuver among the mainstream.

At one point in your career, you moved to Indianapolis with your young son without a job in place. Are you a risk-taker by nature?

I am sort of a risk-taker. But I'm also somebody that when opportunity knocks, I answer the door. I'm more afraid not to do it. I'm more afraid of the opportunity that I'd miss than I am of the risk I'm taking.

You supposedly gave the highest grades of any instructor at DePauw, and your classes were very popular with football players. What's the story?

The story is that you're at DePauw University, a liberal arts college, and you may have a few students that go on and become well-known painters or teach painting or become significant art historians. But you've got a whole boatload of people who aren't going to do that. And are you going to help them appreciate and enjoy and promote and support the arts, or are you going to chastise them for not devoting their existence to creating art?

So I got a bunch of football players, and taught them how to look at something and how to create. And they would do great drawings, because they were a lot less inhibited than these art students per se. It's an example of how I'm not academic. I've always tried to make art accessible to everyone, no matter how complicated it is. These young boys, if they came to class, if they participated, if they did the assignments, they got a good grade.

How does being an artist yourself influence being in arts administration?

I think the biggest influence on this position is the way the collection has been developed. I'm not an art historian, but I hire art historians to write for our catalogs and I'm for art history to some degree. But I haven't developed the collection based on theory. I've developed it based on best work or an artist's eye. It's a different experience. It's unusual for a curator to know almost every single artist in the collection, and I do. So in addition to all this information that's formal, I have all this anecdotal information. It's unique.

You've said you're more interested in helping those who are making history rather than reading history. What do you mean?

I mean I'm not going to be watching the History Channel, OK? If I'm watching TV, I'll be watching "Law & Order." But it is so fun to be a part of the Fellowship and be part of a project that, seriously, to some degree, we are changing the world. We are changing how people think. And when I'm gone, no, it won't have been the biggest impact in the world, but I will have provided the opportunity for people to make change. That's fun.

You have some interesting hobbies, like collecting antique appliances.

I have hundreds of Sunbeam Mixmasters, I have irons, I have an antique refrigerator in the dining room we use as a beverage refrigerator... It's based on the beautiful design of the electrical appliances. Now everything is obsolete, but these are all working, stunning examples of Americana.

And you've collected 100 pounds of scissors that you're planning to use in.an artwork?

Even though I collect all these appliances, I'm really not that domestic. So I do a series I call Ode to Domesticity and I use antique appliances or antique chairs or sewing items or whatever. So it occurred to me that it would be interesting to do something with scissors. On eBay, my husband found all these scissors that had been confiscated at.airports. We bought them in lots. ... There's so many things represented in those scissors, but it's kind of hard to figure out what it's going to be.

Your motto is a line written by your son, Abe, a poet: "Always keep one foot in the ditch, because the middle of the road is the last place you want to be." What does that mean to you?

I want to be on the edge, and I want to be in the fray. I'm not that mainstream. I'm OK with sticking out.