PURCHASE, NY.-Thom Collins has been appointed the sixth director of the Neuberger Museum of Art. Mr. Collins will take up his position at the Neuberger Museum on the Purchase College, State University of New York campus, in early September. In making the announcement, Purchase College President Thomas J. Schwarz said, “Based upon his excellent record of accomplishment, Mr. Collins will build upon a distinguished tradition of leadership as the Museum enters the 21st century.”

Mr. Collins, a native of Philadelphia, was most recently Executive Director of the Contemporary Museum of Baltimore, MD, an institution that presents the art of our time as an educational tool and a catalyst in the processes of social change in Baltimore and the surrounding region. At the Neuberger, Collins will be responsible for all operations and decisions at the Museum including collections, acquisitions, and exhibitions. He will work actively with campus academic leadership to incorporate more fully the resources of the Neuberger into the educational experiences of students at the College. He will collaborate with the Friends of the Neuberger Museum and other community members to enhance the Museum’s role in the region.

Collins is a scholar, art historian and art museum professional who has demonstrated his commitment to contemporary art by engaging audiences with the young artists of our time and the environments in which they live, interact and work. “The Friends of the Neuberger welcome Mr. Collins to the Museum family,” said Helio Fred Garcia, Chair of the Neuberger Museum Friends Board of Directors. “Thom has a proven track record of engaging communities, artists, donors and civic leaders to help the institutions he runs thrive.”

In commenting on the appointment, founding patron Roy R. Neuberger noted that “Mr. Collins and I share a commitment to supporting the careers of living artists” and that “the Museum should be known for being adaptable to the world of contemporary art.”

Thom Collins is an honors graduate of Swarthmore College who earned his master’s degree in art history at Northwestern University, where he completed coursework for a Ph.D. in art history. He is an art historian and critic with more than a decade of experience curating, teaching and publishing in the fields of contemporary art and visual culture. He was a Newhall Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Modern Art, an associate curator at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, an associate curator of the Cincinnati Art Museum and chief/senior curator of the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati.

He has organized the exhibitions Somewhere Better Than This Place: Alternative Social Experience in the Spaces of Contemporary Art; Crimes and Misdemeanors: U.S. Art of the Reagan ‘80s; Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Urban Street Culture; and The Photographic Impulse: A Social History.

Collins has also worked with numerous artists to create new projects, among them Gilles Barbier, Sanford Biggers, Patty Chang, Renée Green, Moshekwa Langa, Lee Mingwei, Hirsch Perlman, Marjetica Potrĉ, Hope Sandrow, Carrie Mae Weems and Zhang Huan.

His publications include Somewhere Better Than This Place and Beautiful Losers, and contributions to Art and Performance, Ecovention, Gilles Barbier: Clones, Slide Show, Topic, Witness and the catalogue for the 1999 Carnegie International. Collins has taught at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Washington and Northwestern University. Collins replaces Lucinda H. Gedeon, who left the Neuberger Museum last year after 13 years as Director to become Executive Director of the Vero Beach Museum in Florida.