LITTLE ROCK, ARK.- The Arkansas Arts Center, the state’s premiere center for visual and performing arts, announces the hiring of Brian Lang as chief curator and curator of contemporary craft and Ann Wagner as the curator of drawings.

“What is so wonderful about both Brian and Ann is that they share a real passion and understanding of materials and techniques as well as a broad knowledge of arts’ larger context,” said Arkansas Arts Center executive director Todd Herman. “With Brian’s passion for contemporary craft and its history and Ann’s natural ability to educate, this duo will help enable the Arts Center to further develop its collection and raise the profile of the institution.”

Since 2007, Brian Lang has served as the curator of decorative arts at the Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, S.C. Prior to his curatorship at the Columbia Museum of Art, Lang was a museum curator at Dumbarton House, Washington, D.C. (2000-2007), manager of operations at the Vance Kirkland Museum and Foundation, Denver, Colo. (1999-2000) and museum curator at the Hiwan Homestead Museum, Evergreen, Colo. (1995 – 1999).

Lang received his Bachelor of Arts degrees in anthropology and Spanish from Beloit College, Beloit, Wis. He received a Master of Arts degree in art history from the University of Denver, Denver, Colo. He has written on Chinese Export Porcelain and specializes in American ceramics.

Lang is affiliated with the American Ceramics Circle, Association of Art Museum Curators, American Art Pottery Association, American Association of Museums, American Association for State and Local History, The Decorative Arts Society, Decorative Arts Trust, English Ceramic Circle, the National Preservation Institute and the National Trust for Historical Preservation.

Ann Wagner comes to the Arkansas Arts Center from Washington, D.C., where she has spent 10 years in the prints and drawings department at the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. She is widely published and her expertise is American modernism, writing on the drawings of John Marin, Herman Maril and Georgia O’Keeffe. Wagner was an adjunct instructor at George Mason University, Fairfax, Va. (2011), Towson University, Towson, Md. (2010) and the University of Maryland, College Park, Md. (2009 – 2010).

Wagner received a Bachelor of Arts degree in art history from George Washington University, Washington, D.C. She received a Master of Arts degree in art history from Boston University, Boston, Mass. She received a doctorate in art history from the University of Maryland, College Park, Md. Wagner is also an artist, receiving a degree in studio art from Montgomery College.

Wagner is affiliated with The College Art Association, The American Association of Museums, The Association of Historians of American Art, The American Studies Association, The Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art, The American Historical Print Collectors Society and The Washington Print Club.

The curator positions are funded by the American Art Renewal Fund grant from the Henry Luce Foundation the Arts Center received in December 2011.