DALLAS, TX.- Bonnie Pitman, The Eugene McDermott Director of the
Dallas Museum of Art, today announced the appointment of Jeffrey Grove as the first Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art. Currently the curator of modern and contemporary art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and previously associate curator of contemporary art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Grove has deep experience in shaping contemporary programs for encyclopedic museums. He will join the DMA in September 2009.
The Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art was established by Adelyn Hoffman with a gift in recognition of the significant and passionate leadership of the DMA by her son, the late Robert Hoffman, and his wife, Marguerite, and continues their commitment to secure and maintain the Museum’s national and international prominence.
“Jeffrey has a terrific sensibility of the vital role that contemporary art plays in museums like the DMA, which embrace many different cultures and periods in their collections and programming,” said Pitman. “Having worked in the leading art museums in Atlanta and Cleveland, he has that wonderful combination of an accomplished track record and a dynamic vision for the future of our contemporary program that will appeal to a wide range of audiences. We are thrilled to welcome him to Dallas.”
Recently, Grove has received critical acclaim for the exhibitions After 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy (2008-2009) and Morris Louis Now: An American Master Revisited (2006-2007), both of which debuted at the High Museum. According to The New York Times, After 1968 “demonstrate[s] that history is not delivered intact by a single authority but by an accumulation of individual and collective voices.” Of Morris Louis Now, Artforum magazine stated, “What made this show important was the way in which it clarified Louis’s concern with process, linking him with other, seemingly very different artists of the ‘60s.”
In his new role at the DMA, Grove will lead the Museum’s Department of Contemporary Art and oversee its exhibitions, programming, publication, and acquisition programs. Working in collaboration with colleagues throughout the Museum, Grove will further cultivate and showcase the DMA’s contemporary collections, which have recently benefited from the tremendous support of local Dallas collectors, notably Marguerite and Robert Hoffman, whose family has endowed his position chair, as well as Cindy and Howard Rachofsky and Deedie and Rusty Rose.
“I am excited to take on this new role at the DMA, a Museum internationally renowned for its dynamic presentations of contemporary art and innovative approach to public programming and education,” said Grove. “The DMA has long been an important center for the study and appreciation of modern and contemporary art, and its collection is one of the strongest in the country.”
Grove will work closely with Charles Wylie, the DMA’s Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art, and The Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, who will be appointed in the future. Wylie continues in his role as a lead curator for the DMA’s active and growing contemporary art program, which includes the recently organized exhibition Willie Doherty: Requisite Distance and the important installation American Art 1950s–1970s, currently on view in the Tower Gallery.
Since 2005, Grove has served as the Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the High Museum of Art, where he was responsible for the management of the contemporary collection and conceived the inaugural presentation of the Museum’s permanent holdings in its new Renzo Piano–designed expansion. From 2001 to 2004, as Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at The Cleveland Museum of Art, Grove directed the Museum’s post-1945 collection of painting and sculpture and oversaw the development of exhibitions, programs, and scholarly publications. Previously, he was the founding curator of The International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., and held several positions at the Akron Art Museum, from 1995 to 1999, culminating as Curator of Exhibitions.
Grove has developed numerous exhibitions and scholarly publications over the course of his career. In addition to After 1968 and Morris Louis Now at the High Museum of Art, other major exhibitions curated by Grove include Michaël Borremans: Drawings (2005-2006) at the Kunstmuseum Basel, MetaScape: Torben Giehler, Benjamin Edwards, Julie Mehretu and Yutaka Sone (2003) at Cleveland, and Liza Lou: Bead the World (2000) at the Akron Art Museum. He has also organized the first solo museum exhibitions in the US for a number of then emerging artists, including Trenton Doyle Hancock, Kelly McLane, and Aernout Mik, currently the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Grove received a doctorate in art history from Case Western Reserve University in 1999, a Master of Arts degree in art history and archaeology from the University of Missouri in 1992, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in industrial design from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1985. In 1994, Grove received the College Art Association Professional Development Fellowship Award. He was the recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities in 1996.
