Catherine Futter '77 has studied, collected, and curated art all over the world, most recently at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. Catherine returned to New York in 2020 to move into her childhood apartment on the Upper West Side and work at the Brooklyn Museum. As the curator of decorative arts and design, she has curated a number of permanent collection installations as well as exhibitions, at least two of which had national tours. She has often worked with interpreter/editor Jennifer Lu '12, who came to the museum in 2022 after several years at the Yale University Art Gallery. A particularly close collaboration was the current exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens, focused on the captivating studio portraits by the Malian photographer. For this project Catherine and Jen pored over “didactics” (artwork labels) and the catalogue for months, hoping to fully convey the significance of Keïta’s remarkable career. They sought to encourage visitors to look closely at his extraordinary portraits, which capture the dynamism of the time period, 1940s to 1960s.

Although they had been working together for a while, it took a colleague who heard them separately mention that they had gone to school across from the Jewish Museum, for them to put two and two together. New York is forever a tiny town.

On December 11, Catherine and Jen led a group of alumnae on a private tour of Seydou Keïta exhibit as well as an immersive Monet exhibit. The Class of ’77 showed up for their classmate including Catharine Guiher, Victoria Kriete, and Lisa Zemann as well as Catherine’s sister, Barbara Futter ’80. Kate Nahon Gordon ’96 brought her parents, and Damaris Wollenburg Maclean ’97 was joined by her mother as well as her classmate Nadia Elrafei. The aughts had a good turnout including Chevelle Dixon and Megan O’Neill ’03, Adwoa Adusei, Annabel Graff, and Lynman Woo ’05, and Emma Neisser and Charlotte Kahn ’09. Zoe Rose '18 joined the group after work and looks forward to more outings!

Over refreshments at the local bar, intergenerational friendships were formed and many ideas for future gallery walks were suggested. When Nightingale alumnae come together, we find one another across generations, and sometimes, in the very same museum.

Please email alumnae@nightingale.org to help organize or receive information about future arts based alumnae programming.