PURCHASE, NY.- Thom Collins, Director of the Neuberger Museum of Art, announced today that Patrice Giasson, Ph.D., editor, author, and scholar, has been named the Alex Gordon Associate Curator of Art of the Americas of the Neuberger Museum of Art. Most recently, Dr. Giasson was a post-doctoral fellow at the Research Center on Art and Languages/École des Hautes Études en Science Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. His new full-time curatorial position was created as a result of an extraordinary one million dollar bequest, made to The Purchase College Foundation/Neuberger Museum of Art Endowment, from the estate of the late Alex Gordon.

Dr. Giasson will work closely with the museum to incorporate art of the Americas and Pre-Columbian art into the future exhibition program, and, as an assistant professor in the Purchase College Department of Art History, more fully incorporate the resources of the Neuberger Museum into the educational experience at the college. He says his focus will be multi-disciplinary and will reflect his three areas of specialization: Pre-Columbian pictography and aesthetics; the visual art and literature of post-revolutionary Mexico; and contemporary art from Mexico in the age of globalization.

“In studying the art of Latin America, it is necessary to challenge the boundaries between popular, indigenous, and mainstream art if you want to understand what’s happening artistically,” Dr. Giasson notes. Of particular interest, he says, is to consider how modern artists portray the Pre-Columbian world and its aesthetics. Dr. Giasson’s future shows will be linked to the courses he teaches at Purchase College. One such course this fall will be “Pre-Columbian Aesthetics in Modern Latin American Art”.

A native of Montreal, Quebec, Patrice Giasson received his Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Montreal in 2004. Between 2005 and 2008, he was a post-doctoral fellow of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada at the EHESS, in Paris. He also earned an M.A. in Mesoamerican Studies from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and an M.A. and B.A. from the University of Montreal.