MoMA Hires Kathy Halbreich, Minneapolis Picks Kaywin Feldman

Two women made headlines at museums this week, with Kathy Halbreich being appointed to a new position at the Museum of Modern Art after months of chatter about her life after the Walker Art Center, and Kaywin Feldman being named director and president of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, marking the first time a woman has been chosen to lead the institution.

NEW YORK—After months of speculation over whether Walker Art Center director Kathy Halbreich was being courted to succeed director Glenn Lowry at the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA has hired her as an associate director, reports the New York Times. Halbreich, who announced in March that she would retire from the Minneapolis museum, effective November 1, is expected to start work at MoMA in February. The museum created the new position especially for Halbreich, who pioneered multimedia and performing arts at the Walker. “The job Glenn has sketched out for me is the cream of any director’s job,” Halbreich told the Times.

NEW YORK—Eugenie Tsai has been appointed contemporary art curator at the Brooklyn Museum. Tsai, who replaces the recently retired Charlotta Kotik, is currently director of curatorial affairs at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens. Before joining P.S. 1 in 2005 Tsai was an independent curator.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Smithsonian Institution announced that Richard Kurin has been named acting under secretary for history and culture and Alison McNally has been named acting under secretary for finance and administration, with both positions effective October 1. The two will share the duties of deputy secretary Sheila P. Burke, who is stepping down on September 30. Kurin has been on staff at the Smithsonian since 1985, where he has directed the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage for almost two decades. McNally has been at the Smithsonian since 2005 and currently serves as senior executive officer in the Smithsonian's Office of the Under Secretary for Science.

BERKELEY, Calif.—Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive director Kevin Consey will step down January 2, 2008, the Berkeley Daily Planet reports. Consey has been at the museum since 2000 and is in charge of the museum’s new building project, which won’t open to the public until after his departure. Before coming to Berkeley, Consey served as director of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, where he led a similar building campaign. The controversial administrator recently had a disagreement with the Berkeley museum’s founding director, Peter Selz, when Consey refused to let the museum show Colombian artist Fernando Botero’s paintings of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. His resignation comes on the heels of news that Botero will give the university all the works in the series, with the condition that some be permanently displayed.

MINNEAPOLIS—The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has appointed Kaywin Feldman its new director and president, marking the first time a woman has been chosen to lead the institution. Feldman has served as director of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Tennessee for the past eight years. She takes up her post in Minneapolis on Jan. 1, replacing William Griswold, who is departing to lead New York’s Morgan Library and Museum.

Farewells
NEW YORK—Manhattan art dealer André Emmerich, an early champion of the 1950s and ’60s school of Color Field painting, has died at the age of 82, the New York Times reports. His uptown gallery, open from 1954 to 1998, “presided over an extensive stable of American and European contemporary artists,” according to the Times. Emmerich, who was born in Frankfurt, Germany, sold his gallery to Sotheby’s in 1996, but continued to direct it until Sotheby’s closed it two years later. He also worked as a writer and editor at publications including including Réalités and Connaissance des Arts magazines, and recently wrote an autobiography, My Life With Art.

PARIS—The French mime artist Marcel Marceau has died at the age of 84, Agence France-Presse reports. Marceau, whose stage persona was known as Bip the Clown, is credited with “single-handedly resurrecting the art form of mime after World War II,” according to the AFP. In addition to creating classic tableaux such as “The Cage” and “Walking Against the Wind,” Marceau founded two mime companies and created the International Mime School in Paris. "He spoke in silence. And what is amazing is that—while so many people speak and manage to say nothing—for him it was the silence that brought a whole melody of language," said French broadcaster and critic Jacques Chancel.

GUELPH, Ontario—Canadian artist Ken Danby has died at the age of 67. The realist painter was best known for his 1972 painting At the Crease. He was born in 1940 in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and in 2001, he was vested in both the Order of Ontario and the Order of Canada—one of Canada's highest honors. He was part of the governing board of the Canada Council and a trustee of the National Gallery of Canada. At the Crease is “considered by many to be a Canadian national symbol,” according to the Associated Press.