In this episode of the Weinberg in the World podcast, Aimee Resnick '26 interviews Priscilla Vail-Caldwell '85, founder of Vail-Caldwell Projects. Priscilla shares her undergraduate experiences at Northwestern, including impactful classes and internships that shaped her career in the arts. She discusses her current role as an advisor and curator, helping clients build art collections with a focus on research and quality. Aimee:
Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we bring you stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Aimee Resnick and I am your student host of the special podcast episode. I'm a senior studying social policy at Northwestern University who plans to pursue public administration in my home state of Colorado.
Today, I'm very excited to be speaking with Priscilla Vail-Caldwell, who is the founder of the consulting firm, Vail-Caldwell Projects. Thank you, Priscilla for taking the time to speak with me today. Priscilla:
Thank you, Aimee, for having me. Aimee:
Of course. To start us off today, we were wondering if you can just tell us a little bit more about your time at Northwestern as an undergraduate in terms of what did you study and what were the impactful experiences you had at Northwestern that led you to your current career? Priscilla:
I think one thing to note is that I came to Northwestern following a year of study abroad in France. So, as a senior, I studied in France, and then I came to Northwestern with an idea that I wanted to be at a big university near a city. So logistics had something to do with actually my choice of university, and I think it had to do with the fact that I had this experience that had really kind of opened my mind up about the world, essentially.
So there was that, and for some reason I declared an art history major very early on in my time at Northwestern. I think as a freshman, I had already decided that that was what I was going to do. So you had asked what was one of the transformative experiences that I had at school, and I was thinking that ironically, in a way, I think it may have been a studio art class that I took because it was very rigorous and I enjoyed it, and I had a lot of respect for the other students in the class who I thought were gifted than I was.
And I then realized that that wasn't really what I should be doing, but I still wanted to be involved in the arts, and I wanted to be involved in art history and working with objects. I always enjoyed those big introductory courses, sort of identifying paintings, and it seemed like a game to me, really. And so I enjoyed that. And then frankly, learning about history through the lens of art. So that was always something that kind of compelled me.
I think another thing that I did while I was on campus, and I do think this is something that big universities offer, especially ones like Northwestern that are near a city like Chicago, are the opportunities to work in different situations outside of the university campus. So I always worked, while I was at Northwestern, I waitressed, I did all sorts of things in order to earn extra money, and I found a job at a gallery downtown in Chicago called Frumkin & Struve.
It's no longer in existence, but at the time, it was one of the big galleries downtown. And I worked there every Saturday. And then I had time in my schedule during the week, and I would work there usually one day during the week as well. And Bill and Debbie Struve were the principals of the gallery, and they gave me a lot... I mean, for a college student, they gave me a lot of responsibility, and they really brought me into the fold in a sense. So, I was included in all sorts of things, and the dinners for the artists, and I got to meet a lot of the artists that they were working with. And it was exciting and engaging, and I thought that that seemed like the kind of life I wanted to lead. I enjoyed the interaction with the artists primarily. Aimee:
Oh, I totally empathize with your studio art experience, I'm taking painting right now, and there are some incredible painters in that class. But I also wanted to just say, I think that your experience having a really meaningful internship in Chicago is a good reminder to students to look outside the Northwestern bubble for opportunities as they're going through school. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about what you do at Vail-Caldwell Projects now that you're in New York. Priscilla:
Well, I'm an advisor and a curator, and I've had my own advisory business now for the last... I think it's been about eight years. So I've always been in the professional... I've always been in the commercial art world, but in this iteration, I advise private people who are building collections on acquiring works of art for the collection. So, we're building things oftentimes from the ground up. Oftentimes, I will start working on a project with somebody and there will be nothing essentially, and we will work on that together and build something that is meaningful and very specific in every single case with every client that I work with. All my projects are very, very different. So there are clients that I work with who buy only the work of one artist. There are clients that I work with who focus very specifically on certain kinds of movements in, for instance, the California Light and Space Movement.
There are people who are interested in collecting works by female artists. It all ends up having very different kinds of focuses. Each one of the projects allows me to apply my research skills and learn a lot alongside whoever it is that I'm advising, oftentimes about different aspects of the art world. So I see what I do, as always, very research-based and obviously sort of a search for quality and also to include different voices in any kind of project that I work on.
I also have a very strong background in modern American painting. So I have this kind of hybrid experience where I oftentimes advise people on the purchase of work by contemporary and emerging artists, but I have a strong background in historic American painting. So, many of my curatorial projects have been focused on the works of some of the seminal painters of the 20th century.
I've done a series of exhibitions at Paul Kasmin Gallery on the work of Stuart Davis. I worked with Kasmin on a number of projects. Another one was a exhibition of sculptures by Elie Nadelman, who is artist who came to the United States from Europe and is considered part of the canon of modern American painting or sculpture, really. He's not a painter, he is a sculptor. I've also done projects with smaller galleries where I've curated relevant shows of young, relatively unknown artists. And that's always fun. I enjoy doing that. That's really a wonderful way for me to dive in and learn about what's going on out there amongst a group of recent graduates. So that's always exciting and I enjoy that kind of work very, very much.
And currently, I think one of the things that I've just started working on is a collaboration with a gallery in London called Pie Artworks and an artist who they represent, whose name is Jill Bradley. So I also advise the estate of Stuart Davis. Aimee:
Yes, it does. And I have a related question, which is that you mentioned having worked with a lot of different genres and periods and different artists in this realm of art history. And while you were going through your education in your early career, was there a certain artist or movement that was particularly influential or touching to you? Priscilla:
I'm going to answer that question by giving you a little bit more of my background. So, I left Northwestern, I moved to New York, and I took a job at a small gallery. And that year of working there were like three people on staff. That was an experience that taught me that I wanted to go back to school and learn to become more expert on something. I wasn't sure exactly what that was going to be, but I needed more skills actually in order to have the sort of job in the art world that I envisioned. So I was accepted at Williams, which a small... Everybody's always confused because it's a college, but it has two graduate programs, and one of them is an art history program that's associated with the Clark Art Institute. So I was one of 12 students in that following year, entering in to a two-year program.
I had the good fortune of... Linda Nochlin was the visiting professor at the time who, if you're not familiar with Linda Nochlin, she was, she died a few years ago, one of the great feminist revisionist art historians of her time. And so studying with Linda, I began to look into the histories of certain artists like Ava Hess and Jackie Windsor. Ava Hess, of course, has been dead for many, many years. Jackie Windsor just died recently. So, at that moment in time, and I'm still very moved by the work and very interested in it, but I was very much focused on the work of minimalist and post-minimalist female sculptors to be extremely specific.
So that experience studying with Linda and looking into the histories of these women and the difficulties that they faced in a world that discriminates against women was eye-opening for me. And it's informed everything that I've probably done since. Aimee:
Well, that's very interesting. And I think it's fascinating how some of these formative pieces of art really brought your eye into the future and your current work. And I know at the Block Museum on campus, we've had several exhibits that kind of follow in line with the types of art that you've just described in terms of the revisionist view of art history, the modernism with their Arabic art exhibit not too long ago. And I'm going to transition us to that because you're currently a member of the Block Museum Advisory Committee, and I just
