Meet Evan Curtis Charles Hall

We had the good fortune of connecting with Evan Curtis Charles Hall and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Evan Curtis Charles, what is the most important factor behind your success?
House Museum’s mission is centered on people, due to the social nature of our practice. Each historic landmark is a repository of oral histories, lived experiences, and layers of residue left by former inhabitants and caretakers. These historic structures are charged by the lives and events that took place within or around them, and as a 501c3 nonprofit organization, House Museum must listen to our collaborators, which includes the materials from the past, historical societies, property owners, artists, and municipal governments. It’s important for us to be sensitive and respectful with each site-specific project because our work is only realized through the unification of diverse partners. We determine our success by whether or not our involvement at a historic property was overall beneficial, and we measure this through impact metrics including the number of artworks produced, local partnerships established, increased visitor attendance, volunteer sign-ups, media engagement, and funding raised. As House Museum advances with a mission to revitalize underserved historic landmarks nationwide, we are exited to be growing in each of these areas.

talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’ll share an abbreviated timeline of my creative journey from 2008 – now. My art practice began in my teenage years, photographing places across Los Angeles and editorial campaigns with friends. I was ignited by Wolfgang Tillmans, after my mother enrolled me in Saturday courses at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Through day trips across Southern California, I developed a solid photography portfolio, which would secure my position at The Cooper Union School of Art in New York City. There I located Photo-Sculpture and began making flat sculptures from textiles and dimensional photographic assemblages guided by professors Walid Raad and Leslie Hewitt. My Bachelor of Fine Arts thesis culminated in a series of nine photographs titled “The Sacrament Manual,” featuring digitized objects from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s online collection and archival detritus. In a studio visit, Walid Raad described my artistic position as being three-fold, “the excavator, the archivist, and the historian.” I was the one who finds, the one who catalogues, and the one who teaches. This revelation would guide my work for the coming years.

I recognized a need to hone my new approach to understanding historic materials, so I pursued a Master of Fine Arts degree and Graduate Certificate of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. The program provided the interdisciplinary space and resources required to work between the fields of Fine Art, Archaeology, and Archival Practice. Through Penn’s Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM), I got my hands in the dirt, traveling to Bat, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Oman. There, I excavated and catalogued pottery finds from a Bronze Age site (ca. 2200 BCE) with the Bat Archaeological Project. During this time, I re-examined Photography with art historian and theorist Kaja Silverman and archived rare manuscripts from the Kislak Center with Jean-Christophe Cloutier and the Municipal Archive of Lugo, Italy. After working with Dr. Peter J. Cobb, field archaeologist and digital humanist, I presented a milestone paper titled “Negotiating History Through a Pictorial Framework” at the 19th Century Photo-Archaeology Conference, held at the University of Haifa, Israel. By this point, my art practice had expanded into the fields that build and define history, and I began to understand the codes, ethics, and people who wield the power to determine the past and the future. Unsatisfied by white wall galleries in the commercial art world, I began looking for other walls, rich in history and social texture, upon which I could present artworks.

Philadelphia, being a World Heritage City with an uncomfortably high number of abandoned buildings, provided the ideal landscape for conceptual conservation exploration. House Museum was established to resist blight and to advocate for the communities impacted by neglected architectural and cultural structures. Our initial projects included renovation plans for the Henry Ossawa Tanner homesite, an experiential proposal for 1801 Vine Street—the new home for the African American Museum of Philadelphia—and the planning of a site-specific exhibition at the Jesse A. Tilge House—a local Queen Anne landmark designed by George T. Pearson—supported by Save Our Sites and the Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia. At this point, my art practice grew beyond the object on the wall to include entire buildings and a social network that involved local communities and politics.

In East Los Angeles, House Museum would collaborate with the La Puente Valley Historical Society to revitalize the John Rowland Mansion, an underserved 1855 Greek Revival home listed on the National Register of Historic Places. We invited artist David Horvitz and Emily Barker to respond to the site, while gaining the support of the Los Angeles Conservancy, Mayor of City of Industry, Cory C. Moss, and Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda L. Solis, First District. The California landmark was successfully re-opened on July 20, 2024 with 11 newly integrated artworks.

I’m still finding my way, but it is exciting to see how it all lines up—in retrospect. My conceptual practice currently locates itself between many mediums, time periods, and social systems. It is focused on generating new approaches to building and perceiving the past, the present, and the future.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We’re going straight to Malibu, either driving up the PCH or crossing over from the San Fernando Valley through Los Virgenes, Malibu Canyon. The drive alone, is worth the trip. For lunch, we grab Thai food and young coconuts from Cholada and enjoy them up the coast. A little swimming, a little hiking, and then a cozy steak dinner at Old Place off of Mulholland Hwy, near Lake Malibu. These spots offer the most beautiful views in Los Angeles and Southern California, from the Pacific Ocean to enclaves in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Let’s

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Jesus, for the vision.

Website: https://www.house.museum

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evan.hall/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evan–hall/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@House.Museum

Image Credits
1. Untitled, 2024 Two original 19th c. hardwood doors and hinges at the John Rowland Mansion. 2. There Will Be No More Night (process), 2023 Digital reconstruction of the destroyed Kuindzhi Art Museum in Mariupol, Ukraine in collaboration with Dmytro Kifuliak. 3. Bat Archaeological Project Settlement Slope Survey, 2019-2020 Evan Curtis Charles Hall, Entry Visa, Sultanate of Oman. 4. Cartographic Orders, 2019 Matte photo paper, binder clips, wood crossbar. 38 x 27 inches In collaboration with Archivio Storico, Lugo (RA), Italy. Supported by Lugoland. 5. The Sacrament Manual (series), 2017 Plexiglass, luster photo paper. 12 x 12 inches. 6. Evan Curtis Charles Hall, House Museum, Google Meet, 2024. 7. Rowland Revision, 2024 Produced with Marcos Hering and Austin Mayer, AIA. Edition of 7, prints available at Prologations.org. 8. Images, 2021 Silicate glass, 3.5 x 3.5 inches, 2.5 x 5 inches, 2 x 4.5 inches, 7 x 7 inches. 9. Room For Framing, 2024 Fragments of John A. Rowland’s original bed frame.