Weekly Shuffle: Pulitzer, MOCA, and Harvard Art Museums

Another week of changing jobs in the art world.

Bart van der Heidel. Photo courtesy of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum has a new chief curator in Bart van der Heide, director of the Kunstverein Munich, who replaces Nicole Delissen (see Bart van der Heide Named Chief Curator at Stedelijk Museum).

Kristina Van Dyke, director of St. Louis’s Pulitzer Arts Foundation since 2011, will step down in May, just in time for the foundation’s unveiling of 3,600 square feet of new galleries, which will more than double its current exhibition space (see Hate Your Job? Pulitzer Foundation Seeks Director). Van Dyke is leaving to work on a book, but will continue work on fall show of African art at the Pulitzer among other curatorial projects.

Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) has appointed Lanka Tattersall as its new assistant curator. Tattersall joins MOCA after a stint as curatorial assistant at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (see MOCA LA Welcomes New Assistant Curator).

Tom Lentz, director of the recently renovated Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will soon step down in July after over a decade on the job (see Harvard Art Museums Director Tom Lentz to Step Down and Ai Weiwei’s “258 Fakes” Greets Visitors to Harvard Art Museums).

The Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University has appointed Caitlin Doherty, the exhibitions and speaker curator at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, as curator.

Lisa Bruno will join the ranks of the Brooklyn Museum Conservation Laboratory as chief conservator. Prior to accepting this position, Bruno was an adjunct professor at the NYU Institute of Fine Arts and at Pratt University.

The Nassau Country Museum of Art in Roslyn, New York, has hired Angela Susan Anton, publisher of Anton Community Newspapers, as its new president. Anton replaces Clarence F. Michalis, who will become executive vice president.

Penny-Liu

Penny Liu. Editor in Chief artnet News China.

Penny Liu, a Beijing-based journalist and former chief editor of Harper’s Bazaar Art China, has been named editor-in-chief of artnet News China (see Penny Liu Appointed Editor in Chief of artnet News China). The artnet News counterpart will launch this month, delivering original Chinese language content.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, has appointed Aaron Betsky as the new dean of its architecture school. Formerly director of the Cincinnati Art Museum, Betsky succeeds Victor Sidy, dean since 2005.

David Breslin, a curator at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has been appointed chief curator of the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, Texas.

Ballroom Marfa, Texas’s contemporary art haven, has named Laura Copelin associate curator (see Laura Copelin Appointed Associate Curator at Ballroom Marfa). Copelin arrives at Marfa after four years at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in California. The post was previously held by Erin Kimmel.

Illham Abdel Rahman, head of restoration at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, has been moved to the Royal Coaches Museum in Bulaq after the Tutankhamun repair fiasco (see King Tut Restorer Transferred, Mask Can Be Fixed  and King Tut Damaged in Botched Repair Attempt).

The Rockwell Museum in Corning, New York, has announced that Kirsty Buchanan, a Dallas-based fine arts management professional, has joined the team as curator of collections.

Ellen Keiter, the director of exhibitions at New York’s Katonah Museum of Art for the last 13 years, has been named chief curator of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts. Keiter replaces H. Nicholas B. Clark, who served as the museum’s founding director and chief curator until this December, and will continue at the museum in an emeritus role as lecturer and guest curator.

Tate Publishing has announced that Jacky Klein will begin her role as executive editor this month. Klein comes to Tate from Phaidon Press, where she was commissioning editor.

Trevor Schoonmaker. Photo by Hank Willis Thomas.

Trevor Schoonmaker. Photo by Hank Willis Thomas.

Trevor Schoonmaker, chief curator of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in North Carolina, been appointed artistic director for the fourth edition of Prospect New Orleans, most recently headed by Franklin Sirmans (see Nasher Curator Trevor Schoonmaker Appointed Artistic Director of Prospect.4).

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, has named Katherine Jentleson as its new curator of folk and self-taught art, filling the vacancy left by longtime curator Susan Mitchell Crawley’s 2013 departure.

Dominique H. Vasseur, the chief curator of the Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) in Ohio, has retired after 10 years on the job. She will be succeeded by David Stark, the director of administration for museum education at the Art Institute in Chicago. The museum has also hired Drew Sawyer, a curatorial fellow at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Ph.D. student at Columbia University, as associate curator of photography, and promoted curator-at-large Ann Dumas to adjunct curator of European art.

The Mexican Museum in San Francisco has appointed Cayetana S. Gomez as president and chief executive officer. Previously, Gomez served as director of fundraising and public relations at the Museo de Memoria y Tolerancia in Mexico City.

Linda Wolk-Simon, a veteran curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,  has been named director and chief curator of Fairfield University’s Bellarmine Museum of Art in Connecticut.

Georgia’s Albany Museum of Art has tapped Barbi Fisher as its new director of education and public programming. Fisher previously worked 31 years in the state’s Dougherty County School System, where she was most recently art supervisor.

Alice Thorson, art critic for the Kansas City Star since 1991, was let go last week after the newspaper made major cutbacks on arts coverage. Her position had already been reduced to part-time hours in 2009.