Lively, with a big smile and talkative hands, Raphaela Platow ushers me into her office at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, where she arrived last month as the Rose’s new curator, the person who’ll be responsible for organizing exhibitions in the museum’s expansive Lois Foster Wing and for enlarging its already formidable collection of contemporary art. The German-born Platow grew up in Munich, studied art in Paris, Freiburg, and Berlin, and worked in galleries and other art venues from London to Raleigh before arriving in Boston. She was a staff member of the 1999 Venice Biennale, responsible for installing Rosemarie Trockel’s exhibition at the German Pavilion (involving a barn-like structure and live pigs . . . but that’s another story). She managed Projektraum-Berlin, a non-profit art space that sponsors site-specific installations of established international artists. Most recently she was international curator at the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, where she helped establish that museum as what one critic called the region’s " most risk-taking venue for contemporary art. "

Reflecting on the process of working with artists to install site-specific or multi-media work, Platow says, " The idea of the museum as a laboratory is all well and good for curators and artists, but I also worry about how to bring the viewers into the work, about how to make a real interaction between the artwork and the audience. A curator must be sensitive to the issues in a particular environment in introducing things. I always ask myself, ‘How do you take it further?’  " With this in mind, she plans to use the Rose’s downstairs Lee Gallery as a project space for experimental work.

Platow also looks forward to involving students and the larger university community at Brandeis. in a discourse about art. " I specifically like this aspect of the job — working with students and getting the university involved. I had experience with this at Raleigh, and I learned that you need to give yourself time to think about the premises of collaboration — what you get out of it, and what you are looking for the students to get out of it. "

The exchange of ideas is a constant theme for Platow, who says she loves to go to public spaces like coffee shops and the library just to observe and enjoy the community around her. She’s hoping to get acquainted with local artists and integrate them into the Rose’s international contemporary exhibition program. She’s also interested in expanding the museum’s collection to reflect current trends. And she has a pet project: to create a café and art bookshop in the Rose’s entry area. Every day, she says, she takes her sandwich out on the steps in front of the Rose and sits there to eat her lunch. " I like to be outside, and I like places where people are able to gather and to form social spaces. A café and a really good bookstore, one that focuses on contemporary art and theory and criticism, that would be so great! "