Displaying items by tag: Curator

The “Nature and Metamorphosis” retrospective includes 56 paintings and 103 drawings from 1924 through 1990, spanning Peter Blume’s entire career. From jarring early works inspired by the machine age and growth of cities through profound ruminations on to power of nature. Blume’s work helped define American modernism.

While best known as a painter, Blume was a virtuoso, dynamic draftsman, and his drawings show a surprising range. The retrospective is curated by Robert Cozzolino, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) senior curator and curator of Modern Art. “Blume was critical to the development and reception of modernism in America. His work played a key role in disseminating avant-garde ideas in the U.S. art world using a method that resembled Flemish art transposed through the lens of Cubism and the unconscious.

The Guggenheim has named architect and scholar Troy Conrad Therrien as Curator, Architecture and Digital Initiatives. As the first person to hold this position, Therrien will contribute to the development of the museum’s engagement with architecture, design, technology, and urban studies, in addition to providing leadership on select new projects under the direction of the Chief Curator and the Director’s Office.

The Guggenheim's role in architecture has always been one of patronage, commissioning Frank Lloyd Wright to design its landmark building in New York City and Frank Gehry to design the celebrated Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which extended the institution's global constellation of museums.

In most exhibitions, especially in mainstream museums, the curator is an elusive and scholarly figure, applying his or her knowledge and ever refined tastes to meticulously craft a show that will engage and enlighten. #SocialMedium does things a bit differently.

For this hyper-contemporary exhibition, the Frye Art Museum in Seattle invited an unusual guest curator to organize the show -- the entire internet. Over a two week period in August, the Frye shared 232 of their collection's paintings on various social media sites including Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram. Internet enthusiasts from around the globe transformed into "citizen curators" simply by "liking" an image.

A familiar face in the Southern California museum world will soon be returning to the area.

Elizabeth Armstrong has been named the new executive director of the Palm Springs Art Museum, leaders announced on Friday. Armstrong, who will begin her new job in January, comes from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which she joined in 2008 and where she held the title of founding curator of contemporary art.

Before that, Armstrong was the acting director and chief curator at the Orange County Museum of Art, where she initiated the California Biennial, and organized such popular shows as "Birth of the Cool: California Art."

She was also a senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, and put in 14 years as a curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents Delacroix’s "Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi," featuring the monumental painting, on view for the first time in Los Angeles. Painted in 1826 by Eugène Delacroix, the leading French Romantic painter of the day, "Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi" is one of the most celebrated French paintings of the 19th century. The work is held in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, France, and has seldom traveled.

“This exhibition is an extremely rare opportunity to showcase a masterwork by one of the 19th century’s most important painters,” said Leah Lehmbeck, curator of European Painting and Sculpture at LACMA. “The picture itself is profoundly rich with political, cultural, and artistic detail, and therefore speaks to a range of issues through its engaging dramatic context.”

New leadership is on the way at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.

John B. Ravenal, currently the curator for modern and contemporary art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, will take the helm as new executive director in mid-January. Interim director Katy Kline has been in place since the departure of Dennis Kois at the end of April. The Lincoln museum, which has an annual budget of about $5 million, was set to announce Ravenal’s appointment on Monday.

Kois left after a six-year tenure that was seen as a time of growth for the deCordova, overseeing enhanced fund-raising efforts and a sharper curatorial focus on sculpture, as well as a five-year strategic plan that went into effect in 2011.

M. Melissa Wolfe will join the Saint Louis Art Museum as curator and head of the Department of American Art, the Museum announced today. She assumes her duties in January.

“Melissa Wolfe is an impressive and prolific curator, having organized dozens of groundbreaking exhibitions, symposia, and publications over her career that speak to her creativity and intellectual rigor,” said Jason T. Busch, the Saint Louis Art Museum’s deputy director for curatorial affairs and museum programs. “Her vision will guide the comprehensive evaluation and reinstallation of the Museum's American art galleries over the next two years.”

The cramped space in which the artist and poet William Blake produced some of the greatest prints in the history of art will be recreated for an exhibition next month at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

The house, the magnificently named 13 Hercules Buildings, in Lambeth, south London, was demolished in 1918. But the floor plans, made for a Victorian survey of the estate, were recently discovered in the Guildhall library by print-maker and guest curator Michael Phillips.

The Portland Museum of Art placed the Robert Indiana sculpture “Seven” in front of the museum Monday morning. The steel sculpture, which announces the museum’s presence at 7 Congress Square, will be celebrated at 5:30 p.m. Friday as part of the city’s First Friday Art Walk.

Indiana, 86, lives on Vinalhaven off Rockland. “This is a public announcement that 7 Congress Square will always be a place for art,” said chief curator Jessica May. She called Indiana “one of the state’s most beloved artists,” and said placing art outside the museum is part of a larger effort to engage with the public whenever possible.