I've come full circle," Ashley Kistler says in the garden behind her Museum District home.

A quarter-century ago, Kistler interned at the VCUarts Anderson Gallery as a Virginia Commonwealth University graduate student studying art history and museum studies. Now, at 53, she's settling into her new role as the Anderson's sixth full-time director.

During that campus internship, Kistler also became a gallery assistant at the long-gone Institute of Contemporary Art in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where she worked her way up to associate curator of 20th century art over the next 18 years.

"Those were exciting years at the Virginia Museum," says Kistler, resplendent in turquoise jewelry and her annual Outer Banks suntan, bees buzzing among the flowers around her.

"Seeing the [Sydney and Frances] Lewis collection come into the museum was thrilling. We were doing visual art and performing arts and the permanent collection and special exhibitions, all at the same time in the Department of Contemporary Art, which was formed in 1985, when the museum's West Wing opened.

"I learned so much. I grew up professionally there."

By 1999, however, Kistler was ready to move on.

"I saw the Hand Workshop as an opportunity to head up something," she says of her nine years as curator of what is now the Visual Arts Center of Richmond.

"The challenge was raising the exhibition program to the next level, making it an increasingly vital and visible part of the cultural scene in Richmond."

Even though she's moved into the director's office at the Anderson, Kistler continues to tie up loose ends at the center's True F. Luck Gallery.

She's preparing her recent Elizabeth King sculpture show for the road and getting "When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits of Women Combat Veterans" ready for its September opening.

"The Anderson Gallery is a perfect fit," says Julie Boyd, who headed the Institute of Contemporary Art. "Everything Ashley's done for the last 25 years has molded her to take this position.

"Ashley is a perfectionist. Whatever she was working on at the Virginia Museum, she would say finally, 'OK, it's done,' and I would look at it, and it would be absolutely perfect. She's thorough, and she writes extremely well, and she gets very wrapped up in her subjects."

Kistler double-majored in studio art - mostly photography - and art history at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., but she knew where her heart lay while growing up in Durham, N.C., and Roanoke.

"I guess I was a weird little kid in some ways," she says. "Art history evolved as my main interest before I went to college and then really came to the surface. I was never serious about pursuing art professionally.

"My creative outlet is putting together exhibitions."

Kistler has no problem cozying up to art, especially contemporary art.

"I look at art as an interactive kind of experience," she says. "The terms of engagement require an active kind of experience. Art is something that engages you intellectually and emotionally. It takes effort and a commitment of time on the part of the viewer.

"The rewards are kinds of experience that aren't available through any other means."

Kistler is known for her practiced and discerning eye.

"But talking about quality is tricky," she says. "There can be a difference of opinion, an overlap, about what warrants attention and what doesn't. I feel strongly that some artists have staying power because they're doing singular things."

She also recognizes that many contemporary artists are rewriting time-honored rules.

"Contemporary art is such a diverse field," she said. "So much installation-based work is being made these days. This often develops into room-size environments through which the viewer can move.

"I think installations will be fruitful for a long time to come, and moving-image and digital media are important trends. Artists today don't restrict themselves to one media or approach. You have sculptors making photographs, for example, and photographers making installations.

"There aren't clear distinctions among art forms anymore."

Kistler has her work cut out for her as she begins to assess the Anderson's growing permanent collection, organize more of the cutting-edge shows that are her hallmark and prepare for the day when a new museum building, now in VCU's master plan, may materialize.

What does she do in her spare time?

"I look at art," Kistler says. "In my life, there's no dividing line between work and leisure."
Roy Proctor, a freelance writer and theater director, retired in 2004 as the art and theater writer for The Times-Dispatch. He can be reached at royproctor@aol.com.