New York is abuzz with the news of a successor to Met director Philippe de Montebello, but we are just as excited to announce the appointment of a new chief curator, Darsie Alexander. Joining us on November 10, Alexander comes to the Walker from the Baltimore Museum of Art, where she most recently served as senior curator and department head of Contemporary Art.
Like the Met, the BMA’s collection of 90,000 objects includes works from an array of periods and places, and her experience at that museum is part of what made Alexander the best candidate for the Walker’s chief curator job, which will have her overseeing programs in the visual arts, design, performance, film/video, and the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. As Walker director Olga Viso observed, “having successfully expanded the contemporary program within an encyclopedic institution, I know that within the Walker, which is clearly committed to the present, Darsie will thrive nurturing new art across the creative disciplines represented here.”
You can read more about Darsie Alexander in today’s Star Tribune, New York Times, or over at artforum.com; for this blog post, though, we thought we’d offer another view on her, via links to a couple of the many exhibitions she’s organized.
One that is particularly relevant to the Walker, given our interdisciplinary bent, is SlideShow, an exhibition from 2005 that blended aspects of photography, film, and installation art in exploring the history of projected slides in post-1965 art. There’s an audio tour of sorts as part of National Public Radio’s coverage; a review from the Washington Post, and a summary on the Baltimore Museum of Art’s website (scroll down and click on “more”).
Another of Alexander’s major exhibitions, Franz West, To Build a House You Start with the Roof: Work, 1972-2008, will open in a month at the Baltimore Museum of Art (and may travel to the Walker). With more than 120 works, it’s a major retrospective on this internationally renowned Austrian artist, who has had considerable influence on a younger generation of artists.
We’ll be posting more on Alexander once we’ve had a chance to meet her – we’re looking forward to watching as she builds on the innovations and experiments of the Walker’s previous chief curator, Philippe Vergne (who recently become director of Dia Art Foundation).
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