INDIANAPOLIS, IN.- The Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields has appointed Dr. Annette D. Schlagenhauff as curator of European art. In her new role, Schlagenhauff will manage the IMA’s significant collection of European paintings and sculpture.
The Museum has also appointed Kjell M. Wangensteen as assistant curator of European Art. Wangensteen will work with Dr. Schlagenhauff on curatorial oversight of the IMA’s early European collection, which includes works by Italian, Spanish, Dutch and German masters, such as Rembrandt, Rubens, El Greco, Ribera, Cranach and Jan Brueghel. The Clowes Collection features the core of these holdings, and a grant from the Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation will underwrite Wangensteen’s position for five years.
The IMA’s collection of European art comprises paintings, sculpture, prints and decorative arts from the 12th through the early 20th centuries, including works by the Old Masters, Impressionists, Neo-Impressionists and Modernists. In addition to the Clowes Collection of earlier works, highlights include paintings by Monet, Seurat, Pissarro, Cezanne, van Gogh, Picasso and Léger. The IMA’s renowned collection of works of art from the Pont-Aven School features paintings and prints by Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard and other artists of this late 19th-century French school. The IMA’s Neo-Impressionist collection includes work by artists like Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Jan Toorop and Henry van de Velde, and is considered the most comprehensive in North America.
“I am excited about the future of our European collection as Annette and Kjell reimagine the galleries afresh,” said Dr. Charles L. Venable, Newfields’ Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO. “During her time at the IMA, Dr. Schlagenhauff has done exceptional work, including exhibitions and scholarship. With Wangensteen’s arrival I am confident the two will create many projects and exhibitions that will both engage and delight our guests.”
Dr. Schlagenhauff began her tenure at the IMA in 2003 as assistant curator of European paintings and sculpture 1800-1945. Since then she has held the positions of assistant curator, prints, drawings, and photographs and associate curator for research. Most recently Schlagenhauff served as curator of special projects and has curated several special exhibitions, including Continuing the Works of the Monuments Men, Revved Up: Cars in Art, 19 Stars of Indiana Art: A Bicentennial Celebration, and served as curatorial liaison for the exhibition series Conservation Science Indianapolis. In addition to exhibitions, she also is manager of the forthcoming scholarly catalogue of the Clowes Collection of Old Master paintings.
Dr. Schlagenhauff formerly held positions at the Dallas Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard University. She has received prestigious fellowships and has authored articles for several publications including Giorgio de Chirico in the 1930s: The case of a hidden female nude for The Burlington Magazine; Gifts of the Gamboliers: Modern Art in Indianapolis for Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History; and Die Kunst zu handeln: Louis Friedrich Sachse, Lithograph, Kunsthändler und Kunstförderer in Berlin for Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 2000. Schlagenhauff received her Bachelor of Arts from Trinity College, her Master of Arts from Columbia University and her doctorate from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.
"An institution like the IMA, with its significant collections and its dedicated staff, can offer so much to the art museum community in general, and to the arts in Indianapolis in particular,” said Dr. Schlagenhauff. “With the help of Kjell Wangensteen, I look forward to harnessing the energy of the IMA to explore new ways to activate the collection of European art for our guests and beyond.”
Wangensteen was the Samuel H. Kress Predoctoral Fellow at The Morgan Library & Museum, and the 2014-15 Theodore Rousseau Fellow in the department of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has held positions in the paintings department of the J. Paul Getty Museum, the department of Old Master drawings at the National Gallery of Art and the department of prints and drawings at the Princeton University Art Museum, where he curated the exhibition The Long Shadow of Hieronymus Bosch. In 2014, Wangensteen was an inaugural Mellon Fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership’s Seminar in Curatorial Practice.
Wangensteen’s most recent scholarship has focused on 17th-century European paintings and drawings. He has authored several scholarly publications, including a chapter for the 2017 volume Queen Hedwig Eleonora and the Arts: Court Culture in Seventeenth-Century Northern Europe. He has contributed to the J. Paul Getty Museum’s forthcoming catalogue of European paintings, and has published articles in caa.reviews and Museum Views. Wangensteen earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in art history from Yale University, Masters of Business Administration from the Yale School of Management and a master’s degree from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art. He will soon receive his doctorate degree from Princeton University, with a dissertation entitled Hyperborean Baroque: David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl (1628-98) and the Rhetoric of Style.
“I am delighted to be joining the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields at this important moment in the museum’s history, with exciting plans underway for both the collections and the campus in the years ahead,” said Wangensteen. “It is also an honor to work with the IMA’s accomplished team of scholars and museum professionals, whom I look forward to collaborating with on a number of important curatorial initiatives.”
Wangensteen begins at the IMA this week.
