WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian American Art Museum has appointed John Jacob as its McEvoy Family Curator for Photography. Jacob will be responsible for research, exhibitions and acquisitions related to the museum’s collection. He joins 11 curators currently on staff for contemporary art, craft and decorative art, Latino art, media art, sculpture, works on paper, folk and self-taught art and 19th- and 20th-century painting. Jacob begins work at the museum July 13.

“John Jacob brings to the Smithsonian American Art Museum a deep knowledge of the field as well as valuable experience in publishing and exhibition planning,” said Virginia Mecklenburg, chief curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “John will bring new energy to our photography program.”

Jacob comes to the museum from the Inge Morath Foundation, where he was director and vice-president facilitating programs related to Morath and support of women photographers, and from the Magnum Foundation, where he was program director of its Legacy Program—collecting, researching and overseeing cultural projects related to the history of Magnum Photos. Recent exhibitions include the internationally touring “Man Ray: Unconcerned But Not Indifferent” (2007; co-curator with Noriko Fuku), “Inge Morath: First Color” (2009) and “Erich Hartmann: New York Stories, 1946– 1957” (2012). Recent and forthcoming publications include Ernst Haas: On Set (Steidl, 2015), and Inge Morath: On Style (Abrams, 2016). Jacob’s interest in American vernacular photography has led to research on several of its great inventions. He was the editor for Kodak Girl: The Martha Cooper Collection (Steidl, 2011), a social history relating the profession of photography by American women to the invention and success of the snapshot. Jacob’s research on spirit photography and the tintype, for which he received the 2012 Shpilman Award for Excellence in Photography from the Israel Museum, will be published by the museum as Ghost Stories: Found Photography and the Certification of Presence.

Jacob began his career as an artist, working with reproductive media including photography, rubber-stamps, mail art, and artist’s books. He earned a master’s degree in art history from Indiana University in 1994 and attended the Getty Leadership Institute in 1996.

Jacob will oversee the museum’s pioneering photography program, which was established more than 30 years ago. The collection examines photography’s evolution in the United States from a documentary medium to a full-fledged artistic genre. In 2013, the museum acquired from The Irving Penn Foundation 100 photographs by Irving Penn (1917–2009), one of the most celebrated photographers of the 20th century. This gift will be featured in an upcoming exhibition, “Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty,” which opens Oct. 23.

The McEvoy Family Curator for Photography was established in 2012 to ensure the future of the museum’s photography collection with a gift from the McEvoy family, which has been supportive of the museum for more than three decades. In addition to generously supporting acquisitions and programs at the museum, the late Nan Tucker McEvoy was chair of the museum’s board of commissioners in the 1980s, and Nion McEvoy, her son, is the current vice chair.