Our Friend of the Week - Natasha Boas

Natasha Boas, Yale PhD and dynamic creative thinker, is one of the most brilliant art curators in her field. She's a winning combination of American and French, which means she's exuberant, innovative, and fun as well as chic, deep, and intuitive. We always look forward to our time together and miss her this month while she's in Paris participating in a curatorial intensive and publication at the Centre Pompidou in the context of the Beat Generation, a new retrospective on the literary and artistic movement born in the late 1940s.Your City: San Francisco and ParisYour What: I love The Thing Quarterly, which is an "object-based publication" that creates editions of useful things designed by artists. The most recent one uses one of my favorite quotes.“Beauty is a promise of happiness.” StendhalIn the summer I can’t live without my NUXE Huile Prodigieuse (Multi-Purpose Dry Oil)

FRIEND OF THE WEEK: 11 QUESTIONSWEBSITE: NATASHA BOAS @ HUFFINGTON POSTINSTAGRAM: @NATASHABOASFACEBOOK: @NATASHABOAS

1. Nickname: Naughty, Nate, Natoushki2. What’s your short story? My short story is too long. I spent a lot of time studying and as a result I have three or four graduate degrees including a Ph.D in Art History that in retrospect seems so intense but which still defines me to this day. After years of working in major museums and galleries in New York, Paris and San Francisco, I am now an independent curator working directly with artists, organizing exhibitions internationally and writing about art.3. What’s your jam? Anything by Patti Smith.4. What motivates you? Intellectual freedom.5. Who do you think you’d have great friend chemistry with? The Obamas, Jane Austen (if she had friends), Eva Hesse, Isabel Marant and Madame de La Fayette. I also know I have great chemistry with Sean Penn. It’s a fact.6. What qualities do your favorite friends have in common? Literary, hilarious and unconventional.7. What’s the smartest, most inspiring, awesome thing you’ve read, watched, or listened to? Badass women painters! I just gave a talk on Jay DeFeo and Joan Brown at the Centre Pompidou last week and am committed to researching women artists who have not had the recognition they deserve and who often were integral parts of art movements such as Jay and Joan were with the Beats and Alicia McCarthy and Ruby Neri were with the Mission School. I am heading to Lausanne to the Musee de l’Art Brut archives to do research next week on an Algerian artist who influenced Picasso. She taught him to make ceramics! I want to tell her story damn it!8. What whets your appetite? Simple pleasures: a great glass of Champagne (preferably Krug for personal reasons) and caviar or smoked salmon and blinis. I need nothing else.9. What’s next on your To Do List? Three words: Yoga in Malta.10. How are you friends with Gina + Amy? Gina and I both grew up in San Francisco and our husbands played basketball together. We love art adventures and share secrets I could never write about here.11. Who would you nominate for our next Friend of the Week? My ex-best friend Wednesday Martin Ph.D who wrote the best seller “Primates of Park Avenue.” (2015). We don’t talk anymore, but I admire her brain and incredible energy. My nickname for her was “Chimpy.” She was the best friend a girl could have when she was young, hungry and wild in New York.