Chicago art curator Stephanie Cristello finds there’s much to savor in unique displays

Step into 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, it looks wet. But look closer, and you see that 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, the 32-year-old curator of the Driehaus’ 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 florescent lights.”

Cristello, a Chicago Sun-Times “Someone to Watch in 2024″ selection, embraces the “daring” side of assembling contemporary art in spaces where you probably wouldn’t expect to see it — like the Driehaus, where busy silk damask wall coverings compete for space with polished walnut and oak.

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 — to re-create a portion of the cosmos, she said.

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

But Cristello isn’t going for shock. And she presents a quiet, almost demure demeanor (jarringly interrupted when she drops an F-bomb just once during our long chat).

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

Westerberg, the Danish artist, said, “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 — and she’s particularly interested in the changes, many of them irreversible, that the planet and its inhabitants are experiencing now and in the recent past.

She said 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: She is the sort of person who can get anything done, but she also has a brilliant mind,” Westerberg said.

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

That background helped form the lens though which she views contemporary art — connecting the ancient past to the present.

She studied contemporary art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). She was a writer first — doing stories for arts magazines and journals — before falling into curating.

Her first professional gig came in 2013, the year she graduated from SAIC, as artistic director of EXPO CHICAGO, where she remained through 2020. EXPO started in 2012, showcasing contemporary art gallery pieces at Navy Pier. Cristello decided she wanted to expand the show beyond the pier, including at 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,” said Lisa Key, Driehaus’ executive director.

Or 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 the team curating a show built entirely from volcanic rock by the American sculptor Alma Allen at Mexico City’s temple-like Anahuacalli Museum.

When does she know a show 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.

And when is it wrong?

“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 doesn’t presently see a future when she’s not living in Chicago.

“It’s the perfect place for an artist or writer to live because you can actually afford to do so. … 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,” she said.

The conversation shifts to art in bigger cities, including London. Would she be interested in curating a show, say, at the Tate Modern?

“I would rather curate an exhibition on the (River) Thames that is only available after low tide,” she said.