Weekly Shuffle: Leaders Leave the Brooklyn Museum and Phillips Collection

Plus new directors for the Dia Art Foundation and Kunsthalle Zurich.

Chelsea Clinton. Photo: Courtesy The Clinton Foundation.

Brooklyn Museum director Arnold Lehman, who has led the institution for 17 years, will retire in June 2015 (see “Brooklyn Museum’s Longtime Director Arnold Lehman Retires“).

The new director of the Dia Art Foundation will be Jessica Morgan, who curated the latest edition of the Gwangju Biennale (see “Gwangju Biennale Celebrates Asia’s Consumer Culture“) and has been a curator at London’s Tate since 2002, most recently as curator of international art at Tate Modern, (see “Dia Art Taps Tate’s Jessica Morgan for Director Job“).

After only eight months on the job, Jenny Gersten has resigned as the executive director of New York’s Friends of the High Line, which is about to open the third and final section of the elevated park (see “Wild Final Section of the High Line Set to Open“), citing a “desire is to return to full-time work in the arts,” reports the New York Times.

Anne S. Bruder has left her job as director at Venus Over Manhattan after only six months, and has joined New York’s Worth Art Advisory as an associate, as per her LinkedIn profile.

The newest board member at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is public relations consultant Ken Sunshine, reports Page Six at the New York Post.

The Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, has hired Erika Holmquist-Wall of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts as the curator of European and American painting and sculpture, reports Artfix Daily.

When the Institute for Contemporary Art opens at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, in 2016, it will be led by inaugural curator Lauren Ross of the Philbook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, reports Burnaway.

The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, is losing chief curator Eliza Rathbone, who is retiring after newly thirty years on the job.

Brooklyn Museum director Arnold Lehman.

Arnold Lehman.
Photo: © 2014 Patrick McMullan Company, Inc.

Chelsea Clinton, the former first daughter and current vice chairman of the Clinton Foundation, has been elected as co-chair of the board of trustees at New York’s Africa Center (see “Chelsea Clinton Elected Co-Chair of the Africa Center“). The struggling institution recently downsized plans for its long-delayed new home (see “Museum for African Art Scales Back Construction Plans“).

Hungary’s foreign minister, Tibor Navracsics, who helped passed controversial legislation limiting media and artistic freedom, will be the European Union’s chief policy maker for cultural affairs (see “Right-Wing Politician Named EU Culture Commissioner“).

Kunsthalle Zurich has appointed Daniel Baumann, curator of the Adolf Wölfli Foundation, to succeed outgoing director Beatrix Ruf, who is becoming director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (see “Daniel Baumann Replaces Beatrix Ruf at Kunsthalle ZĂĽrich” and “Beatrix Ruf Named New Stedelijk Museum Director“).

The Cleveland Museum of Art is welcoming two members to its board of trustees: philanthropist and art collector Toby Devan Lewis, a board member at New York’s New Museum, and Dean Cameron Barry, formerly of Phillips de Pury Auctioneers and Sotheby’s, reports the Plain Dealer.

Jane G. Pisano, director of the National History Museum of Los Angeles County since 2001, is retiring.

Christie’s Asia’s new senior specialist in Asian twentieth-century and contemporary art is Laure Raibault, most recently of Bonhams, Hong Kong, according to a press release.

Sotheby’s Hong Kong has hired Katherine Don, an art advisor specializing in contemporary Chinese art who has previously consulted for the auction house, as its new head of contemporary ink.

Marc Newson. Photo: via the Fox Is Black.

Marc Newson.
Photo: Via the Fox Is Black.

Coinciding with Apple announcement of the first Apple Watch, the company has hired Australian industrial designer Marc Newson, who has previously designed time pieces. He will likely help develop the watch and other wearable technology for the company as part of the design team led by Jonathan Ives, reports Vanity Fair.

There are three appointments at London art fair Art15: Jonathan Watkins, director of Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery, will be the curatorial advisor for Emerge, which features galleries under seven years old; Aaron Cezar, founding director of London’s Delfina Foundation, will serve in the same capacity for the London First section, which give galleries less than five years old their London art fair debut; and Nour Aslam, formerly a specialist in modern and contemporary South Asian, Middle Eastern, and Turkish art at Bonhams, will join the staff full time (see “Art15 Announces Three New Appointments“).

Marie Lavandier, formerly of the Centre for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France is the new director of the Museums of Nice, reports Le Monde.

Les Enluminures, a Paris-, New York-, and Chicago-based gallery that sells medieval manuscripts, artwork, and jewelry, has hired a new senior vice-president in Christopher de Hamel, formerly of Sotheby’s, reports Artfix Daily.

Sydney native Nicholas Chambers returns to his hometown after a stint in Pittsburgh as a curator at that Andy Warhol Museum and art history professor at the University of Pittsburgh as the new curator of modern and contemporary international art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The 2016 edition of the International Architecture Biennale of Rotterdam, titled “The Next Economy,” will be curated by Dutch political scientist and urban planner Maarten Hajer, reports Artforum.

The Salem Art Association, Oregon, is losing Debbie Leahy, its director of development and of the Salem Art Fair and Festival, and Catherine Alexander, gallery director for the Bush Barn Art Center, reports the Statesman Journal. Leahy is starting a consulting business for nonprofits, while Alexander will open an art gallery, Compass Gallery, at Salem’s Willamette Heritage Center next month.

Alex J. Taylor, an Australian art historian, has been named the Terra Foundation Research Fellow in American Art by Tate and the Terra Foundation for American Art reports Artfix Daily.


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