NORFOLK, VA.- The Chrysler Museum of Art announced that Amy Brandt, Ph.D., has joined the Museum as the McKinnon Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. She will oversee the Museum’s more than 2,400 works of art in the modern and contemporary collection in addition to curating new and traveling exhibitions.

Most recently, Brandt was the assistant curator at the American Federation of Arts in New York, where she managed exhibitions, supervised curatorial assistants, oversaw budgeting, and contributed to a variety of grant submissions. Simultaneously, Brandt was working on a doctorate degree in modern and contemporary European and American art at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, which she recently completed. Previously, she held curatorial positions at the Brooklyn Museum and at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Brandt also has a master of philosophy degree from The Graduate Center at the City University of New York and a master in art history degree from Tufts University. She received two bachelor of arts degrees in art history and French, and received a Licence in art history from the University of Paris IV, La Sorbonne.

“We’re thrilled to have someone with Amy’s education, experience and connections,” says Bill Hennessey, the Museum director. “This new position has been made possible by a generous endowment from Orianna McKinnon and her late husband, Arnold.”

“I was deeply impressed by the Museum staff and collection, which includes pivotal works from the post-war period,” says Brandt. “We will be highlighting this outstanding collection, bringing in new exhibitions of contemporary art, and hopefully, new audiences.”

The core of the Chrysler’s holdings in contemporary art are works acquired by Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. during the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, which were subsequently given to the Museum in the 1970s and 1980s. Major works by New York School artists Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, and Helen Frankenthaler, as well as Pop Art masterpieces by Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol, capture the decisive moments in these artists’ careers and testify to the important history of the post-war period. The Museum’s contemporary collection also includes work by Nam June Paik, Elizabeth Murray, and Sam Gilliam.