Weekly Shuffle: Leadership Changes at Frieze, Ballroom Marfa, and More

Plus Boston poaches Chicago's top arts officer.

Victoria Siddall: Director of Frieze Masters
Photo: Linda Nylind
Victoria Siddall. Photo by Linda Nylind, Courtesy Frieze

Victoria Siddall.
Photo: Linda Nylind, Courtesy Frieze.

Frieze Art Fair founders Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp are passing the baton to Victoria Siddall, the current director of Frieze Masters in London (see “Frieze Founders Hand Over Reins to New Director“). After 10 years with Frieze, Siddall will be working with artistic directors to oversee the fairs, with Joanna Stella-Sawicka already on board for Europe, the Middle East, Russia, and Africa, with a director for the Americas and Asia to be named later. Slotover and Sharp, who will focus their attentions on as-of-yet unannounced “new projects,” have denied rumored plans to start a new fair or publication.

New York’s Frick Collection has hired Aimee Ng, who has also worked at New York’s Morgan Library and Museum and as a lecturer at Columbia University, also in New York, as an associate curator. Ng guest curated the Frick’s recent exhibition “The Poetry of Parmigianino’s Schiava Turca” (see “Cracking the Parmigianino Code at the Frick“), now on view at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

Veteran art dealer Ira Spanierman, 86, is retiring after 60 years in the business. As reported by the Observer, midtown’s Spanierman Gallery will close in December.

Following the death of Elizabeth Egbert, who suffered from bone marrow cancer, the Staten Island Museum has promoted its chief operating officer, Cheryl Adolph, who has been with the institution 10 years, to interim president and chief executive officer, reports DNAinfo.

Diya Vij, the communications manager of the Queens Museum for the last four years, is following former museum director Tom Finkelpearl (see “Tom Finkelpearl Promises to Make New York Livable for Artists“) to the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, reports Artinfo.

A regime change is in effect at Texas’s Ballroom Marfa, where co-founder Fairfax Dorn is stepping down as executive director of the 11-year-old non-profit contemporary art space. As reported by Art in America, Susan Sutton, an assistant curator at the Menil Collection in Houston, will take over in the top slot, while Dorn will continue on as the organization’s artistic director.

DIS Photo: Sabine Reitmaier via Biennale Foundation

DIS.
Photo: Sabine Reitmaier via Biennale Foundation.

Lauren Boyle, Solomon Chase, Marco Roso, and David Toro, collectively known as the New York-based art collective DIS, will curate the ninth Berlin Biennale, scheduled to open early in the summer of 2016 (see “DIS Will Curate 2016 Berlin Biennale“).

Julie Burros, the top cultural planner in Chicago, is moving east to take up the long-vacant role of Boston’s chief of arts and culture, writes the Boston Globe. Previously the purview of the office of arts, tourism, and special events, mayor Martin J. Walsh’s new office of arts and culture will have a staff of nine responsible for developing a cultural master plan for the city.

Tate Modern senior curator Emma Dexter is the new director of the British Council, filling the shoes of Andrea Rose, who recently stepped down after 20 years on the job, reports ArtReview.

After 10 years editing Bonhams Magazine, Lucinda Bredin (also the arts editor of the Week) will take over as the auction house’s global director of communications.

Taking the helm at the inaugural Honolulu Biennial, slated for 2016, is Fumio Nanjo, director of Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum (see “Mori Art Museum Director Will Curate the First Honolulu Biennial“).

Aimée E. Froom, an independent scholar who has consulted for many museums, is joining the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as its new curator of Islamic art.

The Portland Art Museum will bid goodbye to chief curator Bruce Guenther, who is retiring after 14 years on the job.

Suzanne Weaver. Photo: Gesi Schilling, courtesy Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.

Suzanne Weaver.
Photo: Gesi Schilling, courtesy Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.

From the ashes of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in North Miami rises the new Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Miami, which has named Suzanne Weaver, a veteran of the Dallas Museum of Art and the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, as its interim director (see “Suzanne Weaver Will Lead Miami’s New Contemporary Art Museum“). Alex Gartenfeld, who was hired as a curator at MOCA North Miami in May 2013 and served as interim director there after the resignation of Bonnie Clearwater, has been named the deputy director and chief curator of the new institution.

The McMichael Canadian Art Collection is losing its chief curator of five years, Katerina Atanassova, to the National Gallery of Canada, where she will serve as a curator of Canadian art.

Hernan Diaz Alonso of Los Angeles architecture firm Xefirotarch will be the next director of Los Angeles’s Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). As reported by the Los Angeles Times, Diaz Alonso, who has been a SCI-Arc faculty member since 2001, will succeed Eric Owen Moss, whose term concludes next September.

Frankfurt exhibition hall Portikus has named Fabian Schöneich, the Kunsthalle Basel assistant curator, as its new curator, reports ARTnews.

Amy L. Powell, who has just completed a curatorial fellowship at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, has been named curator of modern and contemporary art at the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

After seven years serving as the curator of Modern and contemporary art at Alabama’s Birmingham Museum of Art, Ron Platt has been named chief curator of Michigan’s Grand Rapids Art Museum, reports local NBC affiliate Wood TV.

Author and curator Steven Moore, a senior specialist at England’s Newcastle Auctioneers Anderson & Garland, is now a business development consultant at Edinburgh auction house Lyon & Turnbull.


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