Displaying items by tag: Curator

The Frick Collection in New York has named Xavier F. Salomon chief curator of the museum, filling a vacant spot left by Colin B. Bailey who departed the institution in June to become director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Prior to joining the Frick, Salomon spent three years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as the curator of Southern Baroque paintings and before that, he was chief curator of London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery. Salomon is an expert in the work of the Italian Renaissance painter Paolo Veronese and the collecting and patronage of the cardinals in Rome during the 17^th century.

Salomon will assume his new role at the Frick in January 2014.

Gifts from three families affiliated with the Princeton University Art Museum have established the John Wilmerding Curatorship of American Art. The endowed curatorship honors John Wilmerding, an esteemed scholar, curator, collector and Professor of American Art, Emeritus at Princeton University. Karl Kusserow, the museum’s current curator of American art, has been named the inaugural Wilmerding curator.

An anonymous donor with long-standing ties to Princeton made the first gift towards the curatorship. The Sherrerd family, who previously established two funds in support of scholarship and programming in American art at Princeton, and the Anschutz family, which includes one of Wilmerding’s former students, made additional contributions.

Wilmerding, who assumed emeritus status in 2007 and retired from Princeton last spring, has been reappointed by President Obama to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House. He is a trustee of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Wyeth Foundation of American Art. Kusserow, who joined the Princeton University Art Museum in 2005, previously held positions at the Yale University Art Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has organized numerous important exhibitions and his articles and reviews have appeared in American Art, Drawing, Folk Art and The Journal of American History.

James Steward, director of the Princeton University Art Museum, said, “This endowed curatorship not only honors one of the most eminent and versatile scholars of our time, and one of the Museum’s greatest friends, John Wilmerding, but also recognizes the Princeton University Art Museum’s excellence in American art and visual culture. The very first work of art to enter Princeton’s collection in the 1750s was, in fact, an American painting. With this endowment, our work in American art can go forward with confidence and assure Princeton’s leadership in the field of American studies.”

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hardford, CT announced the appointment of Oliver Tostmann as the institution’s new Susan Morse Hilles Curator of European Art. Tostmann, who previously served as a curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, will officially assume his position at the Wadsworth on October 28,2013.

An expert on Renaissance and Baroque artists, Tostmann has lectured extensively throughout the United States and Europe and his writings have been widely published. He will oversee the Wadsworth’s comprehensive European art collection, which includes 900 paintings, 500 sculptures, and 3,500 works on paper. Tostmann said, “I am delighted and honored to work in such a renowned institution. To explore the Wadsworth’s collection of European art is simply irresistible, and I embrace its commitment to scholarship.”

The Wadsworth Atheneum is the oldest free public art museum in the United States and boasts an impressive collection of baroque paintings, French and American Impressionist paintings, Hudson River School landscapes, modernist masterpieces, and extensive holdings in early American furniture and decorative arts.  

After resigning from the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s (MOCA) board last summer, John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger, Catherine Opie and Ed Ruscha have agreed to join the institution’s director search committee. The 14-member team will help find a replacement for former director, Jeffrey Deitch, who resigned in July 2013. In addition to the four prominent artists, the committee includes several members of MOCA’s board including Joel Wachs, who helms the Andy Warhol Foundation.

Baldessari told the Los Angeles Times “pertinent qualities [for a new director] would be fundraising, experience in how a museum operates, and most importantly, past curatorial skill. It would be a real opportunity to whoever is appointed, because there’s nowhere to go but up.” Deitch, who resigned with nearly two years left on his five-year contract, was plagued by criticism during his time at MOCA. While the museum was in poor financial standing when he came on board, the MOCA continued to fall into financial despair during Deitch’s time as director. The museum recently started to regain its footing after fundraising efforts by board members garnered over $75 million in donations.

There have been a number of rumors suggesting that Ann Goldstein, MOCA’s former senior curator who recently stepped down as the director of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, has been discussed as a potential candidate.

Michael K. Brown, a longtime curator at Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, passed away on September 8, 2013 following a heart transplant. Brown, a leading scholar in the field of American decorative arts, was 60 years old. He touched many lives as a scholar and as one of the most gracious and kind lights of the decorative arts world.

Bayou Bend, one of the nation’s premier collections of American paintings and decorative arts, welcomed Brown as associate curator in 1980. An authority on American silver and a specialist in the work of 19^th-century New York cabinetmaker, Duncan Phyfe, Brown leaves behind an inspiring legacy. During his time at Bayou Bend, Brown worked tirelessly to better the institution and helped lead a renovation and restoration to the room settings that are the museum’s landmark.

In addition to his work at Bayou Bend, Brown published dozens of books and articles on American decorative arts, architecture and history and regularly spoke at forums and symposia. He was also an active board member for Houston’s Heritage Society, Preservation Houston and the Victorian Society in America.

David B. Warren, founding director emeritus of Bayou Bend, said, “Michael Brown was my colleague at Bayou Bend for more than two decades; he was a quiet, intense man, who always pursued excellence. As a curator his work was marked by impeccable scholarship, diligent research and, exercising an extraordinary eye, an intrepid pursuit of acquisitions of the most superb quality, whether large or small.”

Brown is survived by his three brothers and their families along with Bart Truxillo of Houston. The museum will hold a memorial in October. Contributions may be made to the Bayou Bend Collection Accessions Fund in Memory of Michael K. Brown; or, to the Michael K. Brown Metals Endowment Fund, c/o Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, P.O. Box 6826, Houston, Texas, 77265.

The Museum of Arts and Design in New York has appointed Dr. Glenn Adamson as the new Nanette L. Laitman Director. Adamson, who previously worked at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, will succeed Holly Hotchner, who stepped down at the end of April. Adamson will assume his role at the Museum of Arts and Design on October 15, 2013.

Adamson helmed the V&A’s Research Department, which oversees, evaluates and supports the development of museum projects. In this role, Adamson helped bring major exhibitions to fruition, managed partnerships with other institutions and led academic fundraising. He also contributed to the museum’s publications, educational programs, media outreach and commercial activities. Before joining the V&A in 2005, Adamson served as Curator for the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which collects and promotes research within the field of decorative arts.  

An advocate for the reconsideration of craft as an inescapable cultural force rather than an unassuming art classification, Adamson has had a profound effect on makers as well as craft historians and theorists. He has published a number of books on the subject and is founding co-editor of the academic, peer-reviewed Journal of Modern Craft.

Adamson said, “I am honored to have been selected to serve as the next director of MAD…I look forward to building on the museum’s recent successes and to working with the museum’s visionary board and senior leadership to enhance and extend MAD’s potential.”

The Willem de Kooning Foundation will sell 10 of the Abstract Expressionist artist’s paintings in an effort to raise over $30 million for an endowment that would support the organization’s research and scholarship endeavors. The works, which were created between 1983 and 1985, will be on view at the Gagosian Gallery in New York as part of the exhibition Willem de Kooning: Ten Paintings, 1983-1985 from November 8 to December 21, 2013.

John Elderfield, a consultant for the Gagosian Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art’s chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture, will organize the exhibition. A portion of the sale’s proceeds will go towards hiring a team of researchers to compile and publish a catalogue raisonné for de Kooning as there is currently no detailed, annotated guide of the artist’s works.

Before showing signs of dementia in the late 1980s, the decade was a highly prolific period for the artist who painted over 300 canvases during this time.

After three years at the helm of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), former New York art dealer, Jeffrey Deitch, is expected to resign as director. Deitch announced his intention to leave the institution to MOCA's trustees and board. He is currently in the middle of a five-year contract with the museum.

Prior to joining MOCA in 2010, Deitch ran the Deitch Project, a massively successful and pioneering contemporary art gallery in Manhattan. He also served on the authentication committee of the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, one of Deitch’s close friends.

Deitch’s tenure at MOCA has been plagued by criticism. After firing longtime chief curator Paul Schimmel in 2012, John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Catherine Opie and Barbara Kruger resigned from the museum’s board, leaving it void of artist representation. While MOCA was in poor financial standing when Deitch came on board, the museum continued to fall into financial despair during his time as director. The museum is just starting to regain its footing after fundraising efforts by board members garnered over $75 million in donations.

A meeting is schedule for MOCA’s board on Wednesday, July 24, 2013. A search committee is expected to form shortly after.

The Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands purchased a rare antique Japanese chest once used as a television stand for $9.5 million. London’s Victoria and Albert Museum had been searching for the 17^th century lacquer chest, one of only ten in the world, since 1941.

The saga of the chest began in 1640 when the head of the Dutch East India Company’s Japanese office commissioned the chest along with three others just like it. All four of the chests were later sold to a French diplomat who passed two of the works off to the British poet William Beckford. Beckford, whose daughter was married to the Duke of Hamilton, inherited the chests and they became part of the Hamilton Palace’s collection. During a sale in 1882 to raise funds for the palace’s upkeep, the Victoria and Albert Museum purchased one of the chests while the other eventually went missing. What the museum didn’t know was that an unassuming Shell Oil engineer had purchased the missing chest in 1970 for a mere $150. The elusive chest was used as everything from a television stand to a storage cabinet until auctioneer Philippe Rouillac and his brother, Aymeric, recognized it.  

While the Victoria & Albert Museum would have liked to have been able to bid on the chest when it went to auction, they simply didn’t have the funds. Julia Hutt, curator of the V&A’s East Asian department, said, “I was delighted to hear the Rijksmuseum had won the auction – it is a very fitting home for the chest.”

The Cleveland Museum of Art acquired a rare enamel-on-copper copy of Titian’s (1485-1576) iconic 16^th century masterpiece Bacchus and Ariadne by the English enamel painter Henry Bone (1755-1834). The museum purchased the 19^th century work at Christie’s London on July 4, 2013 for $478,346. Curator John Seydl made the winning bid over the telephone from a London hotel in an effort to disguise the museum’s interest from other bidders.

The enamel measures 16 inches by 18 inches, which is exceptionally large for the medium typically used to execute portrait miniatures. The work includes an ornate gilt-wood and gesso frame and serves as a prime example of Bone’s innovative and widely admired enamel technique.

After being shipping to Cleveland, the Titian copy is expected to hang in the museum’s early 19^th century gallery, which features French and English art.