Before Jack Rasmussen came to AU in 1973 as a graduate student, he wanted to become a musician. Forty years, four degrees and various posts later, he is now the director and curator of the Katzen Arts Museum, traveling all over the world to bring art back to AU.
“What people are doing today they never would’ve recognized as art in 1973,” Rasmussen said. “The very definition of art changes over time.”
Rasmussen grew up on the West Coast near the Bay Area and was greatly inspired by San Francisco’s Beat Generation of the 1950s. He described the movement as non-commercial and experimental, taking a different direction from the mainstream art movements of the time. He is currently organizing an exhibit of artists from the Bay Area, including poet Robert Duncan and painter Jess Collins.
“Their art is tremendously refreshing and kind of an antidote to the commercial gallery, museum system of producing art stars and auction records,” Rasmussen said. “I think young artists working today have got to appreciate that it’s not about chasing fame, it’s about finding fulfillment and creating something important.”
What is being created, he said, is culture.
Rasmussen defined art as a form of communication between people and cultures.
“I’m not really interested in objects which are divorced from the world or the culture that produced them,” Rasmussen said. “I’m interested in what they have to say about people and the humanity that is represented.”
In bringing together exhibits for the museum, Rasmussen works with other museum curators and foreign governments, traveling around the world from Portugal to Uzbekistan. Most recently, Rasmussen returned from India where he visited the Taj Mahal. He traveled to Agra in an auto rickshaw, a three-wheeled form of public transportation, through five hours of loud traffic. He described it as both the craziest and most breathtakingly beautiful artistic experience of his life.
“Showing what creative people around the world are doing is a very important thing, particularly in regards to creating a world where we don’t look on the other as different and strange but understand their humanity through their art and their culture,” Rasmussen said. “I think that’s a function we can help perform here.”
As director and curator, Rasmussen has collaborated with other departments to help students across schools and majors take advantage of what the museum has to offer. By bringing in art with a variety of perspectives – sociological, psychological, sexual, historical or other – he hopes students find relevance in the museum’s work.
“I hope [students] will find something interesting and provocative that will them surprise them or get them to think. It won’t be something normal or usual, it’ll be eye opening,” Rasmussen said. “I think once people actually walk across Massachusetts Avenue they’re usually in for a pleasant surprise.”
As for his dreams of becoming a musician? He and Peter Starr, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, are in a rock n’ roll band together, where he plays trombone and sings. He continues to paint as well, although mostly for himself.
“I think it keeps me a little bit saner than I might be if I didn’t do it, because this is sort of an intense job…it’s another way that I sort of get out of the pressure cooker and have some fun,” Rasmussen said.
