Al Harris F. is director of the UB Art Gallery in the Center for the Arts. He has been a university staff member since 1994.

How do you choose what exhibits will be in the gallery?
Ideas for exhibitions come from either myself, my two associate curators or from conversations between the three of us. In addition, we also have a Curatorial Initiatives Program through which faculty can submit proposals for exhibitions they would like to curate. These are voted on by myself and the gallery's advisory committee and are awarded a budget and gallery staff support. Occasionally, we also present a touring exhibition created by another institution.

If you could select anyone, whose work would you most like to exhibit in the gallery?
There are many artists who I would like to show, but are not available for one reason or another. Among these are painter Lucian Freud, the Japanese conceptual artist Morika Mori and the late multi-media artist Felix Gonzalez Torres.

Who is your favorite artist, and why?
I don't have a favorite artist. But I do believe Andy Warhol was, and still is, one of the most influential. His ironic embrace, or better, "goosing" of mass-media culture, conflated high and low art. His ideas continue to be reflected in the work of many interesting young artists.

Are you, yourself, an artist?
Yes. After graduating from the University of Texas at El Paso, I made my living as a painter for about 10 years. Finding myself in a rut-making paintings that would sell-I decided to return to graduate school to expand my career choices. I now only make art for my personal gratification.

The mission of the gallery is not only to present work, but to incorporate students and faculty into the process to further illuminate the work exhibited. What kind of involvement of this kind will go on this year?
The gallery engages faculty and students in several ways. We have the Curatorial Initiatives Program (mentioned above) to publish faculty research. We have a Post-exhibition Comments Program that commissions and publishes both faculty and student essays, speculations, on issues raised by our exhibitions. Currently, we are in the process of publishing an essay by Professor Carolyn Korsmeyer of the philosophy department on the exhibition "Hospice: A Photographic Inquiry." I am also in the process of collaborating with Mary Flanagan of Media Study and Austin Booth from University Libraries, and will be working with Samuel Delany from the English department in developing an exhibition on the effects of new technologies and science on the body, using the imagery and stories of science fiction as a way of exploring these ideas. I see this curatorial collaboration as a way of utilizing the research interests of UB faculty and staff in a less-formal and time-demanding way than the Curatorial Initiatives Program. In addition, the gallery has developed curricula, on its own and in collaboration with the departments of Art, Art History and Media Study, that use the gallery's program as a resource. These include "Introduction to Visual Studies," featuring a team-teaching approach in order to introduce students to a broad range of interpretation of the visual, and "Introduction to Contemporary Art," which focuses on contemporary practice and interpretation. In addition, in a less-formal manner, the gallery recently collaborated with the Center for the Arts' technical staff, and theatre department faculty and students to construct and launch the temporary, public-art project, "Rafts of the Archetypes," on Lake LaSalle. We also are providing a gallery space and technical staff support for a graduate student-initiated project featuring an exhibition and series of workshops by traditional Nigerian sculptor Lamidi Fakeye.

Why is art that is exhibited so seldom explained or put into some kind of context by galleries for the benefit of those who come to see it?
Professional galleries and museums do this, whether through labels or wall-mounted text, or free publications like ours. Organizations that don't provide information are either poorly managed or don't have the staff and financial resources to accomplish the goal.

What's your take on the Brooklyn Museum of Art controversy?
Beside the politics of a Republican mayor who previously had endorsed a liberal Democratic governor asserting his conservative credentials, the controversy has spurred people to think about art that combines signifiers from different systems. Apparently dung has a different meaning in Nigeria than it does in the United States. If, in my judgment, I believed that the work was simply meant to shock or defame, I would not show it. But I would need to see it to make that decision. I can't rely on interpretations that start out with deliberate misrepresentations like dung being "splattered," when it is actually modeled, or that it features cutouts from porno magazines, when that is not clear in the reproductions of Mr. Ofili's painting.

Are artists supposed to make us uncomfortable?
I think good art makes us think. It can do this in a number of ways, including making us uncomfortable.

What question do you wish I had asked, and how would you have answered it?
What especially exciting shows do you have coming up at the gallery? In March of next year, "Word and Meaning: Seven Contemporary Chinese Artists," curated by Dr. Kuiyi Shen, will open with a panel discussion featuring the artists and curator. The exhibition will feature work Shen describes as postmodern in the sense that it engages the Chinese language as a form of representation and plays with its historical and contemporary meanings. The project is a collaboration between the UB Art Gallery and Asian Studies. It is part of the Asian Studies and the Arts program initiated by Thomas Burkman.