Robert Fitzpatrick Joins Haunch of Venison

LONDON—Haunch of Venison has appointed Robert Fitzpatrick, former director of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, as its new international managing director. Fitzpatrick, who announced in 2007 that he would leave the MCA, will be in charge of developing and expanding the gallery's exhibition program, and he will also oversee the opening of Haunch of Venison New York, set to open in the fall at Rockefeller Center. Fitzpatrick spent the last decade at the MCA and has also has served as dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia University and president of CalArts. He created the Los Angeles Festival in 1985 and in 1984 served as vice president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee and director of the Olympic Arts Festival. From 1987 to 1993, he served as CEO of Euro-Disney, overseeing the creation of the $4 billion theme park and resort.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Martin E. Sullivan has been named director of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. Sullivan, who takes over the job April 28, has served as the chief executive officer of the Historic St. Mary's City Commission in Maryland since 1999, where he oversees museum research, interpretation and site preservation. He also coordinates master planning, facility development, and academic programs in public history and museum studies with St. Mary's College of Maryland. He directed the Heard Museum in Phoenix from 1990 to 1999, and the New York State Museum from 1983 to 1990. He also has chaired the Accreditation Commission of the American Association of Museums, the U.S. State Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee, and the review committee overseeing compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Currently, he is co-chair of an American Association of Museums ethics task force on antiquities.

NEW YORK—Valerie Smith, chief curator and director of exhibitions at the Queens Museum of Art in New York, will head up programming for visual art, film, and media at the House of World Cultures in Berlin starting May 1. Smith has been with the Queens museum since 1993.

NEW YORK—Eugene Lang College at The New School for Liberal Arts has chosen Martha Rosler as its spring 2008 artist in residence. Rosler’s career spans over three decades with work in various media including video, photo-text, installation, and performance. She has also published several books of photographs, texts, and commentary on public space. Her retrospective, "Positions in the Life World," was exhibited in five European cities and two museums in New York, the International Center of Photography and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, in 2000. Her recent work was featured in the exhibition "Bringing the War Home," at the Worcester Art Museum.

LONDON—Norman Rosenthal, director of exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts is stepping down. Rosenthal has been at the academy for 30 years, and he will pursue freelance curating in addition to becoming a special adviser to the Royal Academy and a consultant to other art institutions. Rosenthal joined the academy as exhibitions secretary in 1977. The Royal Academy's secretary and chief executive Charles Saumarez Smith told Bloomberg the institution will begin to search for a replacement in February, using headhunters.

Farewells
HALIFAX—The conceptual artist David Askevold has died at the age of 67, the Canadian Press reports. Askevold was known for his cutting-edge, experimental photography, and his work has been exhibited in major museums around the world, including New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Getty in Los Angeles, and the National Gallery of Canada. He was a founding faculty member of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where he taught in the 1960s and 1980s.

MADRID—Pepin Bello, a confidante of well-known artists, including the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, the painter Salvador Dali, and the filmmaker Luis Bunuel, has died at the age of 103, the Guardian reports. Although Bello neither created nor left behind any tangible artwork, he was considered an artist by his peers and lived at the famous Residencia de Estudiantes cultural center in Madrid for 14 years, where he forged friendships with artists, became a cofounder of the carousing artists' social group Noble Order of Toledo, and was the inspiration for many of the ideas in Dali and Bunuel's famous 1929 surrealist film Un Chien Andalou. Bello later opened the first drive-in cinema in Spain, near Madrid's Barajas airport, a short-lived business he ran in partnership with the bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin.