Juneer Kibria, Director of Capital Projects

Or, having overseen the recent restoration of the museum’s south loggia, a particularly complex construction project, he may now more aptly be considered the structurally reinforced concrete of our team.

As director of capital projects, Juneer supports much more than just the parts of our campus that may need repair. A generous colleague, he possesses hyper-local knowledge of our corner at Michigan and Monroe as well as a global understanding of how employees and visitors experience the museum, and I’m so lucky to get to work with him each day.

Emily: Juneer, I’m super excited to talk with you.

Juneer: Should I start at the very beginning?

Emily: Sure.

Juneer: So I was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh. My dad was a famous artist as well as a printmaking professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, Dhaka, and my mother was a children’s book author and educator.

Emily: You and your dad, I know, had art in common, which is so cool. Did your mom illustrate her books? 

Juneer: She had other people illustrate, actually. She also worked for a few NGOs and ran schools for the underprivileged.

Emily: So your empathic quality was kind of there from the beginning, from your mother. I think of you as a very empathetic type of person.

Juneer: Yeah. Growing up, both of my parents were very busy and career focused. My dad traveled all around the world. When I was super young I was basically raised by my grandparents, particularly my grandmother. I lost my grandfather early on. He was a civil engineer and worked on the National Parliament House, Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban, with the architect Louis Kahn. My family still lives in the modernist home my grandfather built, which was designed by his firm partner, Muzharul Islam.

Juneer: My grandmother was a singer as well as a phenomenal cook and writer, and she had all sorts of intellectuals come to our house for talk sessions, music concerts—

Emily: Like a salon.

Juneer: Yeah. So I was always surrounded by makers. There was always art. And that influenced me and my brother quite a bit.

Juneer: During O Level and A Level, which is like high school over there, I had poems published, and I drew. I experimented with printmaking because my dad was doing that, and I loved connecting with him in that way. I wanted to know how he worked and thought about the world.

All this eventually led me to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where I pursued graduate school in painting and drawing but ended up making loads of sculpture. Big, large-scale installations.

Emily: How did you end up crossing the street to the museum?

Juneer: After graduation, my partner—now wife—was working here. Graduate school had been so intense, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. She suggested I apply for the museum’s rover program, where you work in temporary roles and try out different things. 

Emily: Did you specifically want to work at the museum, or was it just a job at that time?

Juneer: It was a job. I was like, “Let me just figure my life out slowly.” My first gig was moving boxes for the Accounting office, and then I was an admin for Health Services at SAIC. Finally, I became an admin for what was then Design and Construction with the museum. After about a year, my supervisor there was like, “You’re a great admin. Let’s hire you.” So I got to stay put. That was about 10 years ago, and ever since I’ve been involved in similar work here. 

Emily: Let’s talk about your current role in Capital Programs. 

Juneer: It’s a new role, and of course you and I are still mapping it out. But I manage construction projects for the museum—everything from major structural repairs with contracted specialists to gallery and office renovations. I also tend to the details, like if someone needs an office chair, I’ll take care of it. 

Emily: It can be a lot to juggle. 

Juneer: We’re always busy. It can be challenging, navigating expectations and working on a wide range of projects simultaneously. 

Emily: What have been some of your favorites?

Juneer: I’m really proud of opening the Egyptian gallery a couple of years ago. It was such a team effort. That space—which is very long and narrow—can be difficult to navigate, and I enjoyed solving that puzzle. Accommodating all the structural casework needed to keep everything safe while supporting a thoughtful gallery narrative was a big learning curve for me. But I love big, heavy structural projects in particular, in part because my work in grad school was about concrete.

Emily: This brings us to another recent capital project—the restoration of the loggia overlooking the South Garden. Half of the building was under scaffolding until a few months ago!

Juneer: That was a really complex and unprecedented project. It involved major building surgery—excavation plus some detective work. But we partnered with great experts and found ways to repair the extensive erosion of the loggia’s structural supports so they can continue to hold up this century-plus-old building.

Emily: You led that project so successfully. I think the best project managers are the ones who can figure out how to communicate with many different types of people in different roles, and you are always so gracious with everybody. You build a sense of allyship, which is one thing I really appreciate about working with you.

Juneer: Thanks. Some of that I think grew from my involvement with the museum’s Accessibility Working Group, which I co-chaired during the pandemic. It was a way of putting a microscope to other people’s needs—considering ways to improve access throughout the museum going forward. 

Emily: Understanding your privilege as an able-bodied person is really humbling when you think about how difficult it is for some people to navigate a space this complex. I’m glad that you were able to create a platform for that type of work here that we can continue to build on. 

Juneer: Yeah, it’s really important.

Emily: So what are some of your favorite places in the museum? Where do you like to go in the galleries? 

Juneer: The first time I ever visited, I was instantly attracted to the Felix Gonzalez-Torres piece.

Emily: The frieze, or the candy?

Juneer: The one with the candy, “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.). It always moves me, taking part in a ritual to try and understand something of this stranger’s loss. As an artist, I try to bring some of that to my own projects as well, that sense of participation in a journey with loss, with happiness, with grief.

Emily: It’s sacred.

Juneer: Yeah, yeah, totally.

Emily: And this isn’t a collection work, but you have a connection to the painting we commonly call “Whistler’s Mother,” which was here on loan for a special exhibition in 2017. 

Juneer: Yeah. It was one of my first gallery projects, and I got to work with curator Sarah Kelly Oehler. She had me choose the wall color, among other things.

During that time I applied for my US citizenship, which I was extremely stressed and nervous about. The “Muslim ban” had just gone into effect. When I finally got the interview, my interviewer and I discussed where I work, and she mentioned how much she had loved the “Whistler’s Mother” exhibition. I asked, “Did you like the wall color?” And she said, “I loved the color.” 

Emily: So you’re like, “So do I get my citizenship or what?”

Juneer: It was a really fortunate experience. In a way, because of it, I’m a US citizen.

Emily: It’s always interesting to see how much of a reach and impact this place has. 

Emily: Backing up just a bit: We’ve talked a little about your hobbies growing up, and these days I’m just astounded by your photography and your cooking and your gardening. But I’d love for you to talk about birding in particular. You’ve taken photos of birds that I’ve never seen before. How did you even learn they exist? How do you seek them out? I know you had a hawk in your house growing up—

Juneer: Yeah, that’s where it started. 

Emily: When you first told me that, I couldn’t wrap my brain around it.

Birding Photography by Juneer Kibria

Juneer: I was about 13. A hawk—a black kite—with an injured wing fell into our garden in Bangladesh, and the crows were trying to get to it. I took it in and just kept it with me while it healed. We became friends. I used to throw tiny fish into the air, and it would swoop down and catch them.

Emily: Like a puppy.

Juneer: I did not train it at all. We just had that trust of one another. Ever since, I’ve been fascinated by birds. My wife, Betsy, and I are avid gardeners, and during the pandemic we planted native prairie plants in our little apartment backyard to attract all sorts of pollinators. With them came little birds, and with them came bigger, predator birds. We created a microenvironment, and I photographed the birds because they’re cool. I also take photos of birds back home.

Emily: They’re so cool. And you take the best photos.

Juneer: Thank you. That’s so kind.

Emily: You just bought your first house. Are you planning to create a similar environment in your yard?

Juneer: Definitely. The creatures who live around here don’t have a voice when it comes to what we’re doing to the climate or the landscape in general. And they don’t have a choice. As a Bangladeshi, the way my country was created, the way my family came there, as Muslims, following the Partition of India, we weren’t given much of a choice. So what can I do in my own way, with my own little sliver of land, to create and be empathetic to the creatures around me? 

Emily: The way that you make these microenvironments and study them I think really reflects your awareness of your place in the world and who you are as a person.

Juneer: Oh yeah, thanks. I try to take a micro and macro view of things, at home and at work.  

Emily: You’re true Bangladeshi, I guess.

Juneer: Half-half. But yeah.

—Juneer Kibria, director of capital projects, and Emily Benedict, associate vice president for capital programs

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