Art Critic Ken Johnson Comes Home, Karen Sasaki Moves Up at the Smithsonian

NEW YORK—This week, New York learned it would be welcoming back New York Times art critic Ken Johnson, who left for a staff job at the Boston Globe just a year ago, but decided the Big Apple was the place to be after all. In farewells, prominent New York art collector Alvin S. Lane passed away, as did beloved public art administrator Mickey Gustin Hardman, who left a lasting imprint on Seattle and Los Angeles.

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

BOSTON—About a year after leaving a freelance position at the New York Times for a staff job at the Boston Globe, art critic Ken Johnson is returning to the Times, and, he said in a letter published in the Globe, “a slightly better position than the one I had before I came to the Globe.” Back in New York, he will also be doing some teaching: a seminar in criticism and theory in the studio art MFA program at Hunter College this fall and a seminar in criticism and writing for the School of Visual Art’s MFA program in the spring.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Karen Sasaki has been named head of design, publications, and Web and digital media at the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. Sasaki, who will be in charge of the overall exhibition planning and design, will also supervise a staff of designers, cabinetmakers, preparators, and production managers. Sasaki joined the Smithsonian in 1992 as a visual information specialist and exhibit design and production manager. Prior to that, she worked as a project designer and design assistant in the renovation departments at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Denver Art Museum.

HONG KONG—Christie’s has appointed Sashim Parmanand as its new director for strategy and business analysis in Asia. Parmanand joins Christie’s from Turner Entertainment Networks Asia, Inc., where she served as director for Cartoon Network Enterprises, Asia Pacific.

Farewells
NEW YORK—New York art collector and lawyer Alvin S. Lane died Sept. 13 at the age of 89, the New York Times reports. Lane, who was a partner in the law firm Wien, Lane & Klein, also headed a program of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York aimed at combating art fraud. In addition, he served in 1968 as a member of an art legislation advisory committee created by the New York state attorney general. The collection Lane amassed with his wife, Terese Lyons, includes works by Picasso, Giacometti, Calder, and Nevelson.

LOS ANGELES—Arts administrator Mickey Gustin Hardman died Sept. 18 at the age of 74, the Seattle Times reports. Hardman, a former Seattle resident, served as assistant director of Seattle’s Allied Arts and the Factory of Visual Art at the Good Shepherd Center in the mid-1970s. She also coordinated the Percent for Art Program for King County and later served as a public art planner in Los Angeles. Some of her most notable projects included commissioning film director Catherine Hardwicke to create the Hollywood La Brea Gateway gazebo and uniting poets and artists in "Poet's Walk," a series of sculptural vignettes set in granite at Citicorp Plaza in downtown L.A, each of which is a collaboration between an artist and a poet.

ARLINGTON, Va.—Stephen Patrick, director of the Bowie city museums, died Aug. 24 at the age of 44, the Washington Post reports . Bowie committed suicide after learning he had a brain tumor, according to the newspaper. He ran Bowie’s museums, including the Belair Estate museum, for the past 12 years and taught courses on museums and historic preservation at Goucher College's Welch Center for Graduate and Professional Studies. Born in Baltimore, he began his career serving as an assistant curator of Philadelphia's Masonic Library and Museum.