Robert Rauschenberg Dies at 82

© 2008 Patrick McMullan Photography

Robert Rauschenberg

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SAN FRANCISCO—Gary Garrels, chief curator and deputy director of the UCLA Hammer Museum, will return to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in September to be its senior curator of painting and sculpture. Garrels, who worked previously at SFMoMA from 1993 to 2000, succeeds Madeleine Grynsztejn, who left the San Francisco museum in March. After his initial stint at SFMoMA, Garrels worked as the chief curator in the department of drawings and a curator in the department of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from 2000 to 2005. His final two exhibitions at the Hammer will open in November.

BANGOR, Maine—The University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor has named George Kinghorn as its new director. Kinghorn has worked at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, Fla. for the past nine years, most recently as the deputy director and chief curator and before that as the director. Kinghorn replaces Wally Mason, who left in September after 11 years at the UM museum.

NEW YORK—Haunch of Venison has announced that Michael Rooks will head up its New York gallery as chief curator and director of exhibitions. Rooks previously served as curator of European and American art at the Honolulu Academy of the Arts, curator at the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, and assistant curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. His first exhibition at the new Haunch of Venison space, designed by Steven Learner Studio, will feature contemporary sculpture and will follow the inaugural exhibition, "Abstract Expressionism — A World Elsewhere," curated by David Anfam. 

BERLIN—Art Forum Berlin has named Eva-Maria Haeusler and Peter Vetsch as its new directors. Haeusler and Vetsch are both former employees of rival fair Art Basel, Haeusler having worked as the show manager and Vetsch as the communications manager. The duo will replace Sabrina van der Ley, who has headed up the fair for the past eight years and whose contract expires at the end of the year.

Farewells
CAPTIVA, Fla.—American artist Robert Rauschenberg died on May 12 at the age of 82, the New York Times reports. Rauschenberg was known worldwide as one of the purveyors and shapers of American art in the 20th century, working across media in painting, sculpture, and drawing, as well as across disciplines, designing sets and costumes for theater and dance companies. He initially became famous for his all-black and all-white paintings as well as his assemblages of found materials, and in 1953, he made waves in the art world when he erased a de Kooning drawing. He was a close friend of fellow artist Jasper Johns, with whom he lived in a series of lofts in lower Manhattan in the 1950s and '60s. In 1964, he represented the U.S. at the Venice Biennale, where he was the first modern American to win the international grand prize. His work was shown in major exhibitions at the Pompidou Center, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art during his lifetime.

MEXICO CITY—Olivier Debroise, a critic and curator at the forefront of Mexico City's art scene, died from a heart attack at the age of 56 on May 6. A Palestinian-born French citizen, Debroise settled in Mexico in 1970, where he became an art critic for a number of publications. He also worked as a curator, organizing many important shows and bringing them to cities around the world, including Boston, Houston, London, and Buenos Aires. Debroise helped found the curatorial think tank Grupo Teratoma as well as CURARE, an alternative art critics association and magazine. Most recently he served as the coordinating curator in the department of visual arts at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. There he had been working on plans for the university's new contemporary art museum, which is being designed by Teodoro González de León and is scheduled to open in September.