Hasta La Ideas

On the heels of relaunching its website (have you noticed the background changes from white to black according to the New York City sunset?), the Whitney Museum of American Art has announced two curatorial appointments. The whipsmart and charming Scott Rothkopf will join the museum on December 1 as curator, while Dana Miller has been promoted to curator of the permanent collection. Miller, who co-curated last year’s stellar Buckminster Fuller exhibition, has been the Whitney’s associate curator of the permanent collection for the past seven years.

Rothkopf comes to the Whitney from Artforum, where he has served as senior editor since 2004. Don’t miss his “Best of 2009” picks in the magazine’s December issue. Among Charles Ray, MoMA’s Joan Miró exhibition, and the collected writings of Herbert Muschamp is a shout-out to Aretha Franklin‘s bowtastic inauguration hat, designed by Detroit milliner Luke Song. “Although it threatened to overshadow her face (and everyone else on the dais), Aretha’s exuberant headgear is the enduring emblem of a high point in our nation’s optimism and pride,” notes Rothkopf.

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Spanning the globe, or at least the continent, we bring you news of freshly appointed directors at two esteemed art institutions. Klaus Biesenbach, he of the consummate curatorial skill and ultra-minimalist apartment, has been named director of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, part of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) since 2000. He succeeds P.S.1 founding director Alanna Heiss, who retired last year. Biesenbach, currently chief curator of media and performance art at MoMA and chief curatorial advisor at P.S.1, takes office as director in January, when he will also become MoMA’s chief curator at large. In the meantime, Biesenbach is busy putting the finishing touches on the 2010 MoMA retrospective of the work of Marina Abramovic and co-organizing the New York installation of the touring exhibition “William Kentridge: Five Themes,” opening at MoMA in February.

Over in Seattle, Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, former director of the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich, is the new director of the Frye Art Museum, which was established in the 1950s as a private foundation and museum. Its founding collection focuses on late 19th and early 20th century European art with an emphasis on artists associated with the Munich Secession. Last year, Birnie Danzker curated the museum’s 2009 “Munich Secession and America” show, which taught us the word Künstlergenossenschaft. Bringing things full circle, she served as exhibition director of “The Short Century” and shown at the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich, the Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and…P.S.1.

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It’s been a busy fall for Disney. The company recently announced its agreement to acquire Marvel Entertainment in a $4 billion deal that would bring the likes of Iron Man, Spider-Man, Thor, and the Fantastic Four into the company’s stable of animated characters. Helping to decide the filmic fates of everyone from Captain America to the X-Men—provided that the deal closes—will be Rich Ross, the newly appointed chairman of The Walt Disney Studios. Ross, who has led the Disney Channel to world domination (see also: Montana, Hannah), will oversee worldwide production, distribution, and marketing for Disney’s live-action and feature animated film labels, including Walt Disney, Touchstone, Miramax, and Disney/Pixar. He’ll also head the company’s theatrical and music groups.

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Elsewhere in New York, all eyes in the museum business are on the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as the new guy at the head of the ship, Thomas “Tapestry Tom” Campbell, finally had the first round of his cabinet appointments approved by the museum’s board. They include Carrie Rebora Barratt who, in addition to having a name with vowels to spare in it, will be taking over as associate director for collections and administration, as well as forming a new new-media department, and Sheila Canby, who is leaving the British Museum to head up all things Islamic art. All the other swaps and replacements are detailed here in brief, over at the NY Times. For a full reading on all of this shiny top brass, head over to the Met’s press room for full releases on all of them. Here’s Campbell statement about the new hires:

“I am extremely pleased to announce these appointments,” Mr. Campbell said, “all of whom bring profound experience, outstanding creativity and judgment, and the respect of their colleagues to their new responsibilities. Working together with our strong Board and management, and with our superb staff, Carrie Rebora Barratt, Keith Christiansen, Sheila R. Canby, and Peggy Fogelman will play key roles in furthering the Museum’s goals of upholding the institution’s excellence and vibrancy, and of constantly enriching our visitors’ engagement with art.”

He continued, “Despite the challenging times in which we live, this extraordinary and encyclopedic museum maintains all of its power to awe and inspire, to teach and to enlighten. We are charged with preserving these strengths and building on them for the next generations. I look forward to the exciting teamwork ahead, as I welcome these four top professionals into their new positions and as we continue to work together to further our mission into the next decades of the 21st century.”

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As you may recall, we’re big fans of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center (SJDC) at Parsons The New School for Design. Designed with mind-boggingly efficiency by Lyn Rice Architects, the building wraps a Greenwich Village corner in a bustling, shape-shifting campus hub/art gallery/event space, complete with an auditorium that is at once sleek and cozy. So we’re pleased to report that Parsons has selected a director and chief curator for the SJDC in Radhika Subramaniam, who will also serve as an assistant professor of art and design history and theory.

An independent curator, editor, and writer, Subramaniam most recently served as director of cultural orograms at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She was also the founding and executive editor of Connect: art.politics.theory.practice, an interdisciplinary art journal published by Arts International, and has taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, and New York University. “The New School is an extraordinary place of intersecting cultures, academic scholarship, and global social consciousness,” said Subramaniam in a statement issued today. “The Sheila C. Johnson Design Center has the potential to be a leading forum for ‘creative research’ that considers conceptions of intimate and public realms as well as physical and virtual space, and for responding with intellectual rigor to the questions of form and politics.”

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