Chicago art curator Stephanie Cristello finds much to like in creating unique displays

Step in to the gilded gloom of the Driehaus Museum, and a boisterous past comes alive: an imagined shriek of delight from the ballroom, corseted gowns swishing, men sputtering cigar smoke, perhaps the squeal of children as they slide down the banisters of the grand staircase.

Only something bold, self-assured — even a little cocky — could compete here.

Then, you see it: a female nude, reclining on a blue pedestal in the center of the museum’s Maher Gallery. Its bronze skin is so glossy that it looks wet. But look closer, and there’s something odd about the figure — one of its arms appears to be melting, its left leg a ripple of boneless flesh.

“In a space like this, in order to do a subtle gesture, you have to go a little over the top,” says Stephanie Cristello, 32, curator of the Driehaus Museum’s recently opened contemporary art exhibition “Twin Flame, Double Ruin,” featuring the work of Danish artist Sif Itona Westerberg. “In order to make it look like it fits, you have to do something that’s a little more daring than what you would do in a space that just has white walls and fluorescent lights.”

Cristello embraces the daring side of assembling contemporary art in spaces where you probably wouldn’t expect to see it — like the Driehaus Museum, where silk damask wall coverings share space with polished walnut and oak.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

Last year, Cristello wanted to start showing art at her home. So she invited a Switzerland-based artist to Chicago. They embedded glow-in-the-dark “radioactive” crystals in the concrete floor of her two-car garage in Wicker Park. She says that was to re-create a portion of the cosmos.

Then, she tosses this out: “I want to do an underwater, underground exhibit — that would be great.”

Cristello isn’t going for shock. She has a quiet, almost demure demeanor — jarringly interrupted when she drops an F-bomb in an interview.

Cristello’s strength lies in her ability to connect with artists whose work she wants to display. She typically writes about their work — for a journal, a catalog or in a published essay — before she collaborates with the artist on an exhibition.

Westerberg, the Danish artist, says: “Sometimes, you feel like you have to explain everything and really make sure, especially with the curator, that they understand what your work is about. With Stephanie, she just got it. Every time we had conversations, she sort of added to the process.”

Westerberg’s work explores moments of transformation. She’s particularly interested in the changes, many of them irreversible, that the planet and all of us are experiencing now and in the recent past.

She says Cristello convinced her that the Driehaus, built at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, would offer some interesting “overlays” for her own work.

“She strikes you as a powerhouse,” Westerberg says. “She is the sort of person who can get anything done, but she also has a brilliant mind.”

As a kid, Cristello, who is Canadian, traveled to Italy and Greece to see family and got to see the artistic treasures at the Vatican and the Uffizi gallery in Florence and experience the architectural power of the Acropolis in Athens.

That helped form the lens through which she views contemporary art — connecting the ancient past to today.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

She studied contemporary art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. But she was a writer first — for arts magazines and journals — before moving into curating.

Her first professional curating job was in 2013, the year she graduated, as artistic director of EXPO CHICAGO, which she worked for through 2020. EXPO started in 2012, showcasing contemporary art at Navy Pier. Cristello decided she wanted to expand the show beyond that space to other places, including The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center.

“Stephanie is really great about thinking about artists going into unique spaces and the interplay that art can have with the architecture that it is in,” says Lisa Key, the Driehaus Museum’s executive director.

As Cristello puts it: “I’m the curator you call when you’re doing something really weird and want to make it work.”

Last year, she was part of a team curating a show built from volcanic rock by the American sculptor Alma Allen at Mexico City’s temple-like Anahuacalli Museum.

When does she know a show that she’s curated is working?

“Anything that takes you out of your body for a second so that you can focus on something that is not yourself is a really good thing,” she says.

She also says: “I’ve had moments where it’s a few days before the opening, and I’m, like: This is horrible. I don’t want to open this. Then, I will just stay up and fix it. It’s an intuition. It feels wrong. The work is not being shown in the way it needs to be shown.”

She has had offers to curate shows all over the world, but she sees herself continuing to live in Chicago.

“It’s the perfect place for an artist or writer to live because you can actually afford to do so,” Cristello says. “It has such important institutions. To be able to go to the Art Institute whatever day you like is incredible. It’s one of the best museums in the world.”

Would she be interested in curating a show, say, in London at the Tate Modern?

“I would rather curate an exhibition on the [River] Thames that is only available after low tide,” she says.