Christopher Bedford, director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University since 2012, has been named the new director of the Baltimore Museum of Art. He replaces Doreen Bolger, who will retire in June after eighteen years in the post. Bedford takes up his new position in August.

“The Baltimore Museum of Art has been a pioneer in reinventing the museum experience for 21st-century audiences while remaining committed to its outstanding collections and contributions to the field through special exhibitions and research,” said Bedford in a statement.

Founded in 1914, the Baltimore Museum of Art holds an encyclopedic collection comprising some 95,000 objects.

During Bedford’s tenure at the Rose, the museum received a considerable gift from software entrepreneur Peter Norton, consisting of 41 works from artists including Mike Kelley, Kara Walker, Christopher Wool, and Lisa Yuskavage. He organized shows by artists including Mark Bradford, Chris Burden, Mark Dion, and Yuskavage.

Bedford was also in the news recently as the co-curator of the American pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, which will be devoted to Mark Bradford.

Before heading to the Rose, Bedford was chief curator and curator of exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University from 2008 through 2012. He was assistant curator and curatorial assistant in the department of modern and contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 2006–2008, during which time he also served as a consulting curator for the J. Paul Getty Museum.