ATHENS, GA.- William U. Eiland, director of the Georgia Museum of Art, has announced the appointment of Lynn Boland as the museum’s new Pierre Daura Curator of European Art. Boland will begin working at the museum on May 11, 2009.

Boland received his undergraduate degree in art history from the University of Georgia before acquiring his master’s degree in the same subject from the University of Texas at Austin. During his time spent at UGA, Boland was an intern at the Georgia Museum of Art. He will complete his doctorate in art history this May, with a dissertation on dissonance in modern European art and music. Boland specializes in European art history of the 19th and 20th centuries with a secondary focus in contemporary American art.

Boland worked as a curator for the Creative Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin and was a graduate intern in the department of modern and contemporary art at the Blanton Museum of Art located there. He has also been an assistant instructor and guest lecturer on 20th-century European art and Renaissance and modern art while at the University of Texas at Austin.

His top priority at the Georgia Museum of Art will be the development of the Cercle et Carré catalogue and exhibition, tentatively scheduled for October 2011 to January 2012.

Boland will also direct the activities of the Pierre Daura Center, established at the museum with a gift from Martha Randolph Daura in honor of her father, Catalan- American artist Pierre Daura (1896-1976). Daura was one of the three founders of the artistic group Cercle et Carré, whose members included Piet Mondrian, Fernand Léger and Wassily Kandinsky. The gift consists of a collection of paintings, sculpture and works on paper by Daura, the artist’s archives and an endowment fund to support the center and the Pierre Daura Curator of European Art. The curator will facilitate the study of European art of all periods at the museum.

“The staff and I are excited that Lynn will be rejoining the staff of the Georgia Museum of Art,” said Eiland. “His appointment as the curator of our Pierre Daura Center is another step in its development as an important resource in the study of its namesake’s life and art as well as the context in which he lived and worked. Lynn will bring passion and commitment to the study of this artist, and, indeed, all of European art.”