Cydney Payton to Resign as Director of MCA Denver

LONDON—Kathleen Soriano will be the new director of exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts. Soriano is currently the director of Compton Verney, an art gallery near Stratford-upon-Avon, and previously led exhibitions and collections management at the National Portrait Gallery. Her post at the academy is a new and will replace the exhibitions secretary position, which Norman Rosenthal has held for the past 31 years. Sorriano will begin work at the academy in January.

BUFFALO—The Albright-Knox Gallery has hired Heather Pesanti as curator. Pesanti currently works as assistant curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, where she helped organize the Carnegie International 2008 show, "Life on Mars," among other recent exhibitions. Previously, she was a curatorial fellow at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. Pesanti assumes her position at the Albright-Knox in October.

CLEVELAND—The Cleveland Museum of Art has announced the appointment of C. Griffith Mann as its chief curator; he will begin at the museum in early September. Mann moves to the CMA from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, where he has served as director of the curatorial division since 2007. He also worked as co-director of the curatorial division and assistant director for curatorial affairs, as well as assistant, associate, and full curator of Medieval art at the Walters. Prior to his career in Baltimore, Mann worked in the education departments at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art.

NEW YORK—Christie's has placed Andrew Foster in the newly created role of president, Asia, which will give him direct responsibility for the overall strategy and management of the region. He will also retain his current positions within Christie's — chief operating officer for Christie's Americas and international director of operations for Christie's International — both of which he has served in since 2005. Foster joined the company in 1999 as one of its first international business directors.

DENVER—The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver has announced that executive director and chief curator Cydney Payton will resign this October. Payton has led the museum since 2001, during which time she spearheaded the campaign to build a permanent home for the museum, resulting in a $16.5 million building designed by British architect David Adjaye. She increased the museum's annual budget from $360,000 to over $2.8 million, and she organized U.S. museum premieres for such artists as Yu-Cheng Chou and Collier Schorr. Before joining MCA Denver, Payton served as director of the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. She has no immediate plans for her next career move.

SEOUL—Hong-soon Shin has been appointed president of the Seoul Arts Center, according to the Korea Times. The former CEO of LG International Corporation, he will replace Hyun-taek Shin in the post for a three-year tenure. Hong-soon Shin joined LG Chemical in 1966 and became president of LG International Corporation in 1991. After retiring from business management, he worked as a professor at the Graduate School of Industrial Art at Hongik University from 1999 to 2005 and dean of the Graduate School of Cultural Business Entrepreneurship at Yewon Art University from 2005 to 2006.

NEW YORK—The Frick Collection has announced that Aso O. Tavitian and George Wachter have been elected to the board of trustees, reports the New York Sun. Tavitian, a software executive and art collector, was the co-founder and chief executive officer of Syncsort Inc. and has been a longtime supporter of the Frick, having joined the director’s circle in 2006. Wachter became a member of the council of the Frick in 2004 and is currently serving as chairman. He is also co-chairman of Old Master Paintings Worldwide for Sotheby’s, where he began working in 1973.

Farewells
NEW YORK—Art collector and philanthropist Joseph F. McCrindle died on July 11 at the age of 85. McCrindle worked as a literary agent and founded the Transatlantic Review, a London-based literary magazine that ran from 1959 to 1977. After closing the review, he created the Henfield Foundation, now called the Joseph F. McCrindle Foundation, to award grants to arts, music, and social justice organizations. McCrindle was an enthusiast for old master drawings, amassing 2,500 in his lifetime, and also collected Italian baroque paintings, 19th-century British works, and pre-Columbian art. He donated works to many major museums during his lifetime, and his collection will be posthumously split among about 30 U.S. institutions, including the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and the Brooklyn Museum.