Alice Duncan, Director, Gerald Peter’s Gallery

By Sam Guindon ’21

I would like to reflect on the insights of Alice Duncan, as I found her the most captivating. Alice Duncan represented Gerald Peter’s Gallery. The intimate space of Gerald Peter’s apartment made viewing his collection an extremely personal and in-depth experience. This was the first apartment-style environment that we visited and I was blown away by the art and sculptures that occupied the space. The ability to experience the sculptures especially in person inspired me from both a collector’s and artist’s point of view. For me as more of an art student than an art history student, I really enjoyed Duncan’s description of her journey into the world of art dealing and curation because she described the experience more as a journey of doing something that she loved, rather than only talking about the facts of the experience and the jobs that comprised her path. This allowed me to relate and draw inspiration from her experiences in my pursuits in disciplines not specifically related to museum curation or art dealing. I thought that this means of presenting her path through life specifically was very insightful. I also thought her ideas about our generation’s lifespans was eye-opening, as she talked about how much time spent following a career path each of us really has. To briefly draw on the words of another art world person, Carol Friscia’s point at breakfast before we left about the potential lifespans of our generation perfectly dovetailed into this idea, where she illustrated how each of us students might have enough time to pursue two fully different career paths to completion. Alice Duncan spoke to this in part when she described her switch from the art dealing world to the art curation world. From the perspective and wisdom of Alice Duncan, we should gravitate towards something that we love doing, because spending a lifetime doing something excruciating would become unbearable. This sounds obvious to me now, but was honestly something of a revelation to me in her apartment. Mrs. Duncan also shared some experience to illustrate this, discussing her brief time as a teacher. She said that while she liked teaching the material, she had no patience for the students. Using this point to illustrate the overall harmlessness of making mistakes, this is also something that I’ll remember in my future outside of Hamilton. I didn’t go into the interview with strong expectations for what Alice Duncan would be like, but I assumed that she would have formed a durable personality in order to thrive in such a male dominant climate where she must have come up against incredible pressure to conform. I was correct, but I also came away inspired by her ability to pursue a career path that she loved despite these challenges.