THE DVAA BLOG

See Y’all Around

A Q&A with Danielle Degon Rhodes,

our Outgoing Gallery Director

by Sara Mae Henke

I interviewed Danielle on a kind of gloomy afternoon in Gallery 3. She was busy with installing a 200 pound sculpture in Gallery 1, but took a break to sit with me on the one couch we have up there.

Learning from her about the details of install from leveling paintings to spackle drying times to curating in non-traditional spaces, has already been a highlight of my own work experience at Da Vinci Art Alliance. She is so innovative, we are cheering her on and are certain of her continued success beyond DVAA.

SARE MAE: What is an exhibition that stands out in your memory?

DANIELLE: mai’s fellowship exhibition. Because I was working with a young artist who had really ambitious ideas…It was a lot of collaboration. I was able to work with all of the artists on installing their work in a way that was really involved. One of the artists wanted it to seem like it was coming out of the wall so I plastered it around the edges to be one with the wall. The artist had never even mixed plaster before, and she felt really empowered at the end of it, that the ambitious things she was going for would be able to be attained. The content of the exhibition – she wanted this place to feel not like a gallery, so it was a multi-step process of transforming this from a white wall space to, one part felt like a bookstore, one part felt like a family home. This is one of the first ones I took the lead on, the first one after Bryant left. Maybe that’s why it stuck out too.

SARA MAE: What will you miss most about DVAA?

DANIELLE: What will I miss most about this place that I’m not also taking with me? The quantity of artists that I get to work with. There is a broad range in experience and skill set, working with older people who have been making paintings for 40 years is a really different experience than working with someone who just graduated from their BFA program and is perhaps insecure about their work. A little bit of my job is encouraging the artists to continue what they’re doing, and take their experience of exhibiting here out with them [into the world.]

SARA MAE: What are you most proud of in your time here?

DANIELLE: I did this process of revamping and empowering the exhibitions committee, where after it being a little bit of a stuffy, [just a] small selection of our membership, I sent out a blank call asking each long term and new member if they wanted to join the committee and explained to them what it was about. After a year of working with the new committee, I did a process of evaluating our work for the year and came to find all the members thought it was better than it had been, more connected to the programming going on here, and they saw the direct impact of their decisions on the gallery.” 

SARA MAE: What is something you’re looking forward to?

DANIELLE: Taking what I’ve learned about managing expectations and timelines with me to future projects.

SARA MAE: Yeah, how did you learn more about your personal artistic practice through being a curator here?

DANIELLE: Oh, love it. I came back to a position at Da Vinci Art Alliance after reevaluating my sculptural practice in favor of a more curatorial practice. I found that you’re able to communicate a lot by the way you lay out an exhibition and anticipate the experience of a viewer. I use this thing, in curating you can make 2+2=7 in terms of content and theme. I took the gallery Director position already knowing that I was going to be pursuing my MA in art history with a concentration in art management. This program is building off of skills I already have from working in this position and is also opening up even more the possibilities of what a curatorial practice can look like for me.”

SARA MAE: What do you want to share / say to the members as part of your farewell?

DANIELLE: Philly is a small art community. Everyone knows each other or runs into each other from time to time. I’m not planning on leaving Philly any time soon so I’ll see y'all around.”

Danielle Degon Rhodes (She/Her) - Outgoing Gallery Director

Danielle Degon Rhodes is an artist and curator who is passionate about creating exhibitions and public projects. She co-runs AUTOMAT Collective in Philadelphia and is currently pursuing an MA in Art History with a concentration in Arts Management from Tyler School of Art. Her artistic and curatorial practice focuses on topics surrounding labor and material extraction-- which she has further researched through residencies at the Salzburg Academy of Fine Arts in Austria and Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong.  

If you have questions about dvaa’s BLOG, please direct them to our ProGRAMMING COORDINATOR at saramae@davinciartalliance.org

Sara Mae Henke (They/Them) is a genderqueer writer raised on the Chesapeake Bay. Their creative writing and research orbits around horror and the surreal as it contextualizes gender. They are a 2023 Big Ears Music Festival Scholar and 2022 Tinhouse Summer Writing Workshops alum. Recently, they were a finalist for the Loraine Williams Prize and have work forthcoming or published in Passages North, the Georgia Review, the Offing, and FENCE. They write music as The Noisy and received their MFA from UT Knoxville. They are currently an Adjunct English Professor at Drexel and an Executive Assistant at Da Vinci Art Alliance.