Marta Kuzma.
Photo: Courtesy of the The Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’Arte.

After an international search to replace Robert Storr, Yale University School of Art will receive its first female dean.

Succeeding Storr’s decade-long run at the Ivy League institution is curator Marta Kuzma, vice chancellor and rector of the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, who has successfully navigated 25 years in various institutions across the contemporary art world. Yale University President Peter Salovey told YaleNews, “I am confident that she will develop a distinctive vision for the Yale School of Art.”

Robert Storr.
Photo: Courtesy news.yale.edu.

“You’re in a field where there’s always challenges about being self confident in your vision and abilities,” Storr said in an interview with the New York Times, “so providing a pathway to the successful origination of an artistic career, I think, is going to be very important.” Storr’s decision comes after service to Yale as both an institutional leader and an art world personality since 2006.

Yale University School of Art.
Photo: Courtesy of Yale University School of Art.

Kuzma will be leaving her post as head of the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. She was previously the director of the Oslo-based Office for Contemporary Art Norway, as well as a founding director of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art in Kiev. In addition, she served as the head of international programs for the International Center of Photography in New York.

Storr will return to Yale as a faculty member after a sabbatical in 2017.