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Hey everyone …

Please forgive your faithful Culturist if she’s a bit slow in responding over the next week. I’m up in Maine, and I’m doing all of this from a DIAL-UP connection. So be kind. And rest assured that I’ll be back.

The same could not be said when Cathy Edwards, the much-loved artistic director of Dance Theater Workshop, relocated to New Haven two years ago to take on the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. While DTW lucked out in hiring the incomparable Carla Peterson as Edwards’ replacement, at the time it felt like a cruel blow to a city where inspired curators often seem all too rare. Too, Edwards’ departure came amid great turnover in several of the city’s storied downtown houses: just two years earlier, Debra Singer had become the new executive director and chief curator at The Kitchen, and Vallejo Gantner had replaced the beloved Mark Russell at P.S. 122.

Now, Edwards is following Russell again - but not in departing. On Monday, The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art announced that Edwards has come on board as the Guest Artistic Director for the 2009 and 2010 Time-Based Art (TBA) Festivals. But don’t panic, New Haven, she will remain with the A&I festival.

They don’t make many like Cathy Edwards…

Russell was PICA’s guest director from 2006 until this year, following the founding artistic director Kristy Edmunds (1995-2005). Edwards’ tenure begins after this year’s TBA Festival ( September 4-14). So … while it’s too bad that New York had to lose a gem like Edwards, it’s great that she’s getting to influence festivals as diverse as TBA and Arts & Ideas. I’m excited to see what she’ll do.

Curators like Edwards create a context in which experimental becomes the norm - it’s always amazing to me to think how close an institution like the Joyce Theater and DTW are physically (both are on 19th street, less than a block away), yet how far apart they are in terms of programming choices. While DTW is always pushing the envelope, the Joyce tends to go for safe everytime. The big houses in particular are guilty of playing it safe -we’ve all sat through Next Wave festival presentations at BAM that feel more like “Last Decade,” for example, which is why it’s so exciting that an iconoclast like Gerard Mortier is taking over at City Opera. Presumably, he’ll shake things up just as Peter Gelb is making waves at the Met.

Of course, houses need to fill seats, and the bigger the house, the more seats to fill - as you go up the scale, ticket sales play an increasingly big role in operating budgets, meaning that a small house like DTW has a luxury the Joyce/BAM/LC don’t. But curators can’t just go for what’s popular, or they shouldn’t - it’s the difference between being a politician with one eye on the polls, and being a leader. It’s up to curators, in large part (along with critics and artists, of course), to educate their audiences, to say, “hey, this thing that looks so strange, that isn’t what you think of as dance/theater/painting/opera - well, look again, look harder, because it is.” Otherwise, it’s awfully difficult for an art form to move forward.

I’m interested to hear from any and all about the state of curators in New York. Are folks happy with this city’s cultural gate keepers? Please sound off - feel free to make sweeping, absurd generalizations, or comment very specifically about a particular art form or even an institution. The Culturist is all ears. Well, until my dial-up farts out again.