Alumni Spotlight
Alumna Marta Staudinger, BA Art History ’09, has many titles. She is an artist, an independent curator, an international art consultant and historian, and is the founder and director of Latela Curatorial in Washington, D.C. Her gallery has been voted Best Commercial Art Gallery in Washington, D.C., during each of the last four years—and the gallery has only been in existence for four years. Of her work, Staudinger says that she balances “multiple art-related projects, mainly curating special exhibitions, sourcing art for residential and commercial clients, advising artists on business growth, creating and exhibiting my own art, and lecturing as an art historian for the Smithsonian Institution in Europe a few times a year.”
During her time at Mason, Staudinger says, “Art history called me before I knew what it was. The idea of ‘renaissance’ always intrigued me because, as a multipotentialite, I felt ‘renaissance woman’ explained who I was growing into. It only made sense to learn more about the Renaissance period, so—while majoring in a different field, and out of pure need to do something new and explore—I signed up for two art history courses in one semester: Art of the High Renaissance and ARTH 101 Introduction to the Visual Arts. After that semester, I switched majors to art history and never stopped diving deeper.”
While she was diving deeper into art history at Mason, Staudinger says that she received guidance from the art history faculty when preparing for her future career. “The professors were a huge element to my success in landing internships and getting into a graduate program to build my experience,” she says. “Their regular advice in particular helped me realize that I wasn’t a traditional-track academic and find the confidence to look into exploring my own avenues.”
After Mason, Staudinger earned her MA in curatorial studies and new media art curatorship from the Universitat de Ramon Llull/ESDi in Barcelona, Spain. She has worked as an art professional in Italy, Spain, and the United States, and she regularly travels around the world as part of her work.