MoMA's John Elderfield to Retire

NEW YORK—The Museum of Modern Art's chief curator of painting and sculpture, John Elderfield, is retiring. Elderfield will step down in July 2008, and a successor has not yet been chosen. Elderfield has been at MoMA since 1975 and has served in its top curatorial spot since 2003. He has curated 24 exhibitions and 20 publications at the museum and is credited with heading up some of MoMA's most influential shows, including its current Martin Puryear exhibition. He supervised the reinstallation of the museum's galleries for painting and sculpture after the expanded institution reopened three years ago. MoMA has created the title of chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture for Elderfield, who will maintain a consulting role after his retirement.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Phillips Collection has appointed Dorothy Kosinski as its new director. Kosinski is currently the senior curator of painting and sculpture at the Dallas Museum of Art. She will take the reins of the museum in the spring, succeeding Jay Gates, who is retiring.

NEW YORK—Gabriel Perez-Barriero will be the new director of the Coleccion Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. Perez-Barriero, currently the curator of Latin American Art at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, takes over the post on April 15, 2008, succeeding Rafael Romero D., who will become director emeritus and senior adviser for the Cisneros Collection. 

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.—The Santa Barbara Museum of Art has named Larry J. Feinberg as its new director. Feinberg comes to Santa Barbara from the Art Institute of Chicago, where he has served as a curator in the departments of Medieval through Modern European Painting and Modern European Sculpture for a decade. Feinberg, who has also held positions at the Allen Art Museum of Oberlin College, The Frick Collection, and the National Gallery of Art, takes over the post March 1, 2008.

LONDON—The Foundling Museum announced its first Foundling Fellows on November 28. Musician Damon Albarn as the Handel Fellow, sculptor Richard Wentworth as the Hogarth Fellow, and children's author Jacqueline Wilson as the Coram Fellow will work with the museum in 2008 to develop creative initiatives for children.

TURIN, Italy—Daniel Birnbaum has been named curator of the second T2, the Torino Triennale, Flash Art reports. Birnbaum is the director of Portikus in Frankfurt, Germany. Birnbaum has yet to select artists for the 2008 T2.

VATICAN CITY—Pope Benedict XVI has chosen historian and former Florence museum superintendent Antonio Paolucci to lead the Vatican museums, AFP reports. Paolucci takes over for Francesco Buranelli, who is moving to the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology.

Farewells
NEW YORK—David Oppenheim, dean of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University from 1969 to 1991, died November 14 at the age of 85, the New York Times reports. Born in Detroit, Oppenheim also was as a clarinetist at Tanglewood and a producer of classical music records and television documentaries. At NYU, Oppenheim was credited with securing the $7.5 million donation from billionaire businessmen Laurence A. Tisch and Preston Robert Tisch that allowed most of the art school’s programs to be centralized in a 12-story building at 721 Broadway in the 1980s, increasing enrollment and budget, starting the school’s musical theater writing program, and creating the school’s “studio system” of independent studies.

LONDON—Artist Colin Pearson died on December 3 at the age of 84, the London Times reports. Pearson, hailed as one of the most important ceramic artists of the 20th century, had work in major exhibitions around the world and won major international art prizes, including the Faenza International in 1975, his first award. He also was an influential teacher of pottery at such institutions as the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, Harrow College of Art and Design, and Medway College of Art and Design. He opened his own Quay Pottery studio in 1961 in Aylesford village. Pearson’s last exhibition was in 2003 through German dealer Marianne Heller.