Paul Anderson Honored for Twenty Years of Service

“Twenty years goes by in a hurry,” said Paul L. Anderson, curator of Southwest American Art and former Head of Design at Brigham Young University’s Museum of Art.

Anderson would know—this year he’s being honored for his twenty years of dedicated service to the school.

When Anderson was hired as the first exhibit designer in 1992, the museum was still under construction. He worked on several aspects of the interior design of the building including some of the woodwork and the furniture—much of which is still used today.

Twenty years, three museum directors, and hundreds of exhibits later, Anderson says he feels that the museum has grown to play a critical role at the university.

“Our principal mission is to reinforce the educational and cultural experience of the students here.” Anderson said. “We are also interested in outreach to the community at large.”

One of the challenges of working for the museum has been creating high-quality exhibits without the resources available at some of the bigger museums across the country.

“We’re a middle-sized museum with the staff of a much smaller museum,” Anderson said. “We have very ambitious goals to do exhibits of the quality you would see at the major museums in the country, but we have to do it with much more limited resources and much smaller staff.”

Part of what inspires Anderson is his devotion to the arts. He feels that there is a deep connection between the art he curates and his faith.

“I think the arts are connected to spirituality,” Anderson said. “In many ways, art connects us across barriers of nationality, culture and time. It takes us through the barriers of death as we experience a kind of immediacy with the works of people who are long gone—we can feel some of what they felt through their art. These are profoundly spiritual things.”

Anderson brought to BYU many years of experience designing museum exhibits for the Museum of Church History and Art. He had also worked to restore several important Church historical sites, including the Newel K. Whitney Store in Kirtland, the Carthage Jail where Joseph Smith was murdered, and the Manti Temple.

One example of a powerful artistic experience that stands out to Anderson was when the museum played home to two of the figures from the Burghers of Calais by Auguste Rodin. He believes Rodin was one of the greatest sculptors of the human figure that has ever lived.

“When they took the front off the crate, it took my breath away,” Anderson said. “When the same pieces were placed in the gallery with proper lighting, it happened again. The power of great art, when you’re close to it and when you know a little bit about it, can have an enormous emotional impact. Within a day or so, I was rendered breathless several more times. It’s nice when those kinds of experiences are part of your job.”

This article was published March 14, 2012 on the official blog of the College of Fine Arts and Communications. You can read the article in its original format here.