LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) announced the appointment of Britt Salvesen as the new Department Head and Curator of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography, and the Department Head and Curator of Prints and Drawings. Ms. Salvesen previously served as Director and Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson.

LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director Michael Govan states, “I am thrilled to welcome Britt to LACMA. Both our Photography and Prints and Drawings departments boast robust collections and programming, and I look forward to seeing Britt bring her energy and enthusiasm to each. After the recent historic acquisition of the Vernon photography collection, I’d like to continue to raise the profile of photography, drawings, and prints. Britt has unique talent and experience to lead the design of a new photography, print, and drawing storage and exhibition space for LACMA West in the coming years.”

LACMA’s plan is not to combine the departments of Photography and Prints and Drawings but to employ Ms. Salvesen’s expertise to create the next phase of building storage as well as classroom space to vastly enhance the public’s access to the museum’s collections. In addition, the museum has long-range plans to hire a specialist in pre-nineteenth-century prints and drawings at the associate curator level to round out the know-how already in place with the museum’s associate curators Edward Robinson (Photography) and Leslie Jones (Prints and Drawings).

Ms. Salvesen’s proficiency and zeal for photography are evidenced by an impressive body of exhibitions that have ranged from contemporary monographic shows highlighting the work of iconic photographers Harry Callahan, Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, and Danny Lyon to broader exhibitions including Boxed Sets: Portfolios of the Seventies and New Topographics, an exhibition with nine international venues and which will open at LACMA on October 25.

Ms. Salvesen received her undergraduate degree in Spanish and art history from Trinity University, San Antonio, TX, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa before earning her masters degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, in art history. She went on to earn a PhD in art history from the University of Chicago, specializing in nineteenth-century modern art.

She worked for the Art Institute of Chicago for nine years in the Publications Department as the Associate Editor of Scholarly Publications before becoming the Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2003.

In 2004 Ms. Salvesen became a curator at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, where she curated a collection of over 80,000 prints and 3.8 million archive items. During her time at the university she was named a Center for Curatorial Leadership Fellow, 2009, and awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency, 2008, and a Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship, 2007.

Britt Salvesen will join the LACMA staff in mid-October 2009.