Olga Viso to Leave the Hirshhorn for the Walker, Farewell to Philanthropist H.R. Dietrich

Photo by Dwight Carter

Olga Viso

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

Keep us up to date by sending the latest comings and goings to NewsEditors@artinfo.com.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Smithsonian Institution has named Kevin Gover director of its National Museum of the American Indian. Gover is a member of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and a professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, where he also is a faculty member of the university’s Indian Legal Program. He served as assistant secretary for Indian Affairs in the Interior Department from 1997 to 2000. Gover, who joins the museum on December 2, succeeds founding director W. Richard West Jr., who is retiring after 17 years.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Olga Viso, director of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, will leave the museum in January to become director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Viso has been at the Hirshhorn for 12 years, first as a curator, then as deputy director under Ned Rifkin. She was promoted to director two years ago. Viso, who increased visibility of cutting-edge contemporary work during her tenure, particularly video and performance art, said she found the opportunity at the Walker, which offers programming in both fine and performing art, particularly attractive.

HOUSTON—The Menil Collection has named Bernice Berend Rose chief curator of its new Drawings Institute. Rose, who will be the first curator for the yet-to-be-built institute, is currently director of drawings and special exhibitions at the PaceWildenstein gallery in New York. She also served for several years as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art. She takes up her new post in October.

LONDON—Sebastian Lopez has been named director of the Institute of International Visual Arts. Lopez’s professional experience includes serving as founding artistic director of the Daros-Latinamerica Collection in Rio de Janeiro, director of the Gate Foundation in Amsterdam, and curator of the 2004 Shanghai Biennale. He succeeds Augustus Casely-Hayford and Gilane Tawadros.

Farewells
VIENNA, Austria—Konrad Oberhuber, former director of Vienna’s Albertina museum, died September 12 in San Diego after a long illness. Oberhuber began his career at the Albertina, then served as research curator at the National Gallery in Washington D.C., and later, as a professor of fine arts and curator of drawings at Harvard. He returned to Vienna to direct the Albertina in 1987, retiring from the position in 2000. A respected art historian, Oberhuber was best known as a Raphael scholar and also studied Mantegna, Michelangelo, Titian, and Giorgione. He taught at the University of Vienna, Cambridge University, Smith College, and the International Christian University of Tokyo.

CHESTER SPRINGS, Pa.—Philanthropist and early American art collector H. Richard Dietrich died August 30 at the age of 69. According to the New York Times, he collected both privately and for his Dietrich American Foundation, which he established in 1963 to collect and research early American decorative and fine arts and lend works to museums. Pieces from the collection have passed through more than 50 institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the White House. Dietrich also donated works to several museums.

FAYETTE, Ala.—Folk artist Jimmy Lee Sudduth died September 2 at the age of 97. The self-taught artist’s “textured paintings made partly from Alabama mud were prized by collectors around the world,” according to the New York Times. His work, which exploded in popularity during the folk art movement in the 1980s, also is in the permanent collections of the Museum of American Folk Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution, the High Museum of Art, and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. It also was the subject of a book, The Life and Art of Jimmy Lee Sudduth.