Detroit Institute of Arts Announces Appointments
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Detroit Institute of Arts Announces Appointments



Graham W. J. Beal, director of the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) today announced four key staff appointments at the museum: Kenneth Myers, curator and department head of American art; Joseph Cunningham, curator and department head of Contemporary art; Pedro Moura Carvalho, curator and department head of Middle Eastern, Islamic, and Asian art; and Glenn Gates, research scientist in the Conservation Services Laboratory. The appointments bring new programmatic and scholarly talent to key areas of the DIA. The curators were secured through the museum consulting firm Thomas and Associates of New York City.

The DIA’s eight curatorial departments are: European art; American art; Contemporary art; Middle Eastern, Islamic and Asian art; Africa, Oceania and the Indigenous Americas; the General Motors Center for African American art; Graphic Arts; and Film and Video. The DIA reorganized the curatorial division in fall 2003 as part of a strategic planning process to support the museum’s ongoing renovation and expansion, and the reinstallation of the entire collection, which will be completed in 2007. Designed by Michael Graves & Associates, the Master Plan Project will provide enhanced gallery spaces, infrastructure improvements, new visitor amenities and, as part of the reinstallation, new interpretive tools for visitors that will encourage direct engagement with the art.

“The Detroit Institute of Arts is committed to new scholarship and innovative thinking,” said Graham W. J. Beal, DIA director. “We are transforming the DIA into a more accessible, visitor-centered and dynamic art museum for the 21st century, and these appointments will contribute significant experience and fresh perspectives to this process. Our outstanding collection, together with the rare opportunity to take part in the reinstallation, attracted these stellar candidates to the Detroit Institute of Arts. We are thrilled to have them on board.”

Kenneth Myers, curator and department head, American art

Kenneth Myers comes to the DIA from the Freer Gallery of Art/Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, a division of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. where he served as associate curator of American art. While at the Freer, Myers curated many exhibitions, including the recent popular and critical hit Mr. Whistler’s Galleries: Avant Garde in Victorian London. Prior to joining the Smithsonian, Myers served as assistant director of Research and Publications at the New Jersey Historical Society, and was a senior fellow in the department of American Painting and Sculpture at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Myers will join the DIA staff in March 2005, and will head a department of four.

Joseph Cunningham, curator and department head, Contemporary art

Joseph Cunningham joined the DIA on Nov. 30, 2004 and heads a department of three. Since 2001, Cunningham has served as curator of American Decorative Art 1900, a private collection New York of American early modern design. He is guest curator of the forthcoming exhibition Minimalist Art Now, which opens at the Elvehjem Museum at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in February 2005. Cunningham is also co-curator (with Barbara Bloemink) of the exhibition Design ¹ Art: Functional Objects from Donald Judd to Rachel Whiteread, currently on view at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, and co-author of the accompanying exhibition catalogue. His other publications include scholarly articles on John Cage, Agnes Martin and Robert Smithson, as well as Gertrude Stein and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Cunningham earned a bachelor of arts in Philosophy and Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and received a doctorate in Philosophy from the City University of New York Graduate Center.

Pedro Moura Carvalho, curator and department head, Middle Eastern, Islamic, and Asian art

Pedro Moura Carvalho will join the DIA in May 2005 and head a department of three. Carvalho comes to the DIA from his position of deputy curator of the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, London. He is part of a team of three curators responsible for what is one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Islamic art. Carvalho also curated the exhibition The World of Lacquer, 2000 Years of History, at the Calouste Gyulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, and edited its catalogue. More recently, he has been involved in the planning and installment of two exhibitions in London: Ornements de la Perse, Islamic Patterns in 19th-Century Europe from the Khalili Collection at Leighton House Museum, London, and Heaven on Earth, Art from the Islamic Lands: Works from The State Hermitage Museum and the Khalili Collection at Somerset House, London. He is co-author of the forthcoming catalogue of the Khalili Collection entitled Gems and Jewels of Mughal India and has contributed to several exhibition catalogues and academic periodicals including Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorichen Museums, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society, Oriental Art Magazine, and Murqarnas.

Glenn Gates, research scientist, Conservation Services Laboratory

Glenn Gates will be joining the DIA’s Conservation department in February 2005. He is currently completing a post-doctoral fellowship in Conservation Science at the Strauss Center for Conservation, an arm of the Harvard University Art Museums, where he has been for the past two years. Gates was formerly a research assistant in the Scientific Research department at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in the science department of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Gates has a bachelor of arts in Chemistry from New College, Sarasota, Florida, a master of science in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville, and a doctorate in Physical Chemistry from the University of South Florida, Tampa.










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