AIMEE NG
Italian Renaissance specialist and curator at The Frick Collection on the BEAUTY that can both elevate and confine.
The concept of beauty is a complicated one for Aimee Ng. In her role as curator at The Frick Collection in New York, she is surrounded by some of the most beautiful works of art – Rembrandts, Titians, Vermeers. Within that glorious mansion on Fifth Avenue there is no shortage of refined aesthetic objects on which to feast one’s eyes and Ng knows all too well from her daily strolls through its galleries the restorative power beauty can offer. And yet, she is also aware of how beauty can sometimes conceal the difficult, darker side of our humanity: beauty, she says, ‘can be a double-edged sword’.
Ng, like me, grew up in the Canadian suburbs, which speaking from our shared experience was somewhat lacking in the aesthetic refinements of the grand European tradition and perhaps it was that blandness that drew us both to study Italian Renaissance art – like moths to a flame. After completing her doctoral studies at Columbia University, Aimee worked in curatorial positions at the Morgan Library & Museums and then at The Frick Collection, where she frequently appears on the popular Cocktails with a Curator and is currently overseeing the transition of objects to the temporary Frick Madison, which is set to open this spring. It was a pleasure to sit down with Ng and discuss the complexities of beauty – and of female beauty, in particular – in both art and everyday life.
How did you first become aware of beauty?
I have to go back to kindergarten picture day in suburban Toronto, in working-class Scarborough, in an immigrant household. We weren’t destitute in any way, but I didn’t grow up in a beautiful home – beige walls, beige carpet – it was nothing special. My parents were also very frugal and practical, so you can imagine the scene on my first picture day. I wanted to wear a dress, but when my mother checked the weather and it was minus-seventeen she dressed me in pink pants, a pink turtleneck, a pink vest – I was completely bundled up, and then I also wore pink glasses and pink shoes. You get the picture! I went off to school dressed like a marshmallow, while my best friend, Tammy, arrived wearing not just any dress, but one you would have put a flower girl in. It was blue chiffon, like a ball gown. It wasn’t that I became necessarily aware of beauty in that moment, but I became aware of the effects of beautiful things. That whole day people were dying over Tammy and her huge blue dress – like the Infanta Margarita in Velazquez’s Las Meninas. The photographer put her in the front row of the class picture with her dress spreading out over three people – while I was in the back. Even then there was permission or privilege attached to beauty and that has always left an imprint on me.
NG HAS WORKED EXTENSIVELY ON FRANCESCO MAZZOLA, CALLED IL PARMIGIANINO, INCLUDING HIS PORTRAIT SCHIAVA TURCA FROM c. 1530. GALLERIA NAZIONALE DI PARMA. PHOTO: WIKIPEDIA
Can you describe one of your most memorable encounters with beauty?
I was on a plane in my early twenties returning from Paris and there was a group of high school students, American kids who had gone to Europe on a high school trip, with their chaperone or teacher, a French man who reminded me of Gérard Depardieu. On this plane, I was reading the Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, so I’m deep into thinking about the burden of female beauty, the presence of the male gaze, etc. So I’m sitting there reading this feminist book and this guy, this teacher who is this chaperone to these kids, drops a note on my tray that asks ‘is beauty a myth or is myth beautiful?’ Even back then I rolled my eyes at such simplistic inversions. To make it worse, my mother was sitting next to me; she saw the note, grabbed it from me, and crumpled it up in her hand. It was incredibly awkward, especially as he was sitting behind us and there were still five hours left in the flight. What was I supposed to do? What did he mean? Did he think I’m beautiful? Or was he just trying to see my reaction? Either way, I became very self-conscious in that moment and aware of the ways people wanted to talk about beauty. I felt like no matter what I did someone was now watching and I was somehow expected to perform.
What is the most beautiful object you live with day to day?
I don’t own a lot of nice stuff. What I do have the privilege of living with day to day, however, is a view from my apartment of the Municipal Building in downtown Manhattan. And at the very top is a large gold sculpture called Civic Fame; this is the second largest figural statue in New York City after the Statue of Liberty. The model for it was America’s first supermodel, Audrey Munson. Her body is depicted all over the city – for example, in the pediment above the entrance to the Frick (because it was moved from the porte cochere), at Columbia University (my alma mater), and at the Plaza Hotel. She is everywhere. There are dozens of sculptures in New York and across the United States that are based on this woman’s body and face, and yet her name doesn’t appear on any of them. When I wake up in the morning, the sun rises over the building and reflects off her flowing robes, which I see tinged with the sadness and the difficulty of this woman’s life; but it is also an enduring and uplifting thing that her work, although not the artist herself, has left this legacy – as both muse and model. I made a very short video about this for this Frick series called What’s Her Story? because she was the model in the lunette that everyone walks under when they enter the museum – in essence she frames your experience of that particular collection, and my everyday.
ENTRANCE TO THE FRICK COLLECTION IN NEW YORK WITH MUNSON PICTURED ABOVE. PHOTO: WIKIPEDIA.
Does beauty make you a better person?
It is a fragile thing: beauty can make a person better, but it can also corrupt and motivate in terrible ways. The idea that beautiful objects can dictate identities that are ideal also means leaving other identities out – creating unnecessary hierarchies, for example. And so there can be an ugly side to beauty. That said, having respect for beauty is a respect for human dignity. For instance, wanting to give children a pleasurable place to live, a visual, aesthetically uplifting place to call home, to grow up in, to look at, is a respect for those kids. I don’t mean chastising immigrant parents like mine to put more money into wallpaper and paintings, but rather for city departments to also consider the dignity of beauty when building housing for families in need.
How do you cultivate a sense of the beauty in your everyday life?
The truth is I don’t, or I didn’t until very recently. It was not a priority. It was not something I knew how to do. It was not something I grew up doing. I’m thinking of this question only now. How do I live in beauty? How do I create a beautiful home? That has not been something I have ever done until recently from spending more time in our apartment and also having a little more disposable income (and I mean just a little bit more, but it again raises the relationship between beauty and privilege). Only now can I start to think about it. And the way I think about it is that I want to wake up in the morning and feel good about being here. Much of it is just keeping organized with my two young children and husband. Having a sense that everything that I own has a place; that everything has a value in some way. And I don’t just mean Marie Kondo: I really mean having the confidence that the things you own are here for a reason. I want to cultivate a sense that objects are important because they have more than their appearance to them, they have a sense of value that is not just visual or material, but a narrative, a story, a memory.
NG AT THE FRICK COLLECTION. PHOTO COURTESY OF YVONNE ALBINOWSKI PHOTOGRAPHY.