© Petr Tausk

Cornell Capa, New York, 1983

Will Elder Harvey Kurtzman

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NEW YORK—The Guggenheim Museum has announced the promotion of two of its curators. Susan Davidson, formerly senior curator, will now serve as senior curator of collections and exhibitions, and Vivien Greene, formerly associate curator, will now act as curator of 19th and early 20th-century art, a newly created position. Davidson is currently working on an Ed Ruscha commission for the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin and a Motherwell collage exhibition for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. Greene, who also serves on the board of the American Association of Museum Curators, is currently working on the exhibition "Utopia Matters" for the Deutsche Guggenheim and a show on Vorticism for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

SYRACUSE, N.Y.—The Everson Museum of Art has named Steven Kern as its new director. Currently the director of the William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut, Kern replaces Sandra Trop, the Everson's director since 1995. Kern has also held positions at museums in San Diego and Massachusetts. He assumes the new post July 1.

LOS ANGELES—The J. Paul Getty Museum has appointed Claire Lyons curator in the department of antiquities, effective June 2. Lyons currently works as senior collections curator, history of archaeology and ancient art, at the Getty Research Institute, where she has held various positions since 1985. She has excavated at Morgantina in Sicily, Murlo, Metaponto, and Corinth and is a former vice president of the Archaeological Institute of America. Lyons is also a research associate at UCLA and a lecturer at the University of Southern California.

NEW YORK—Metropolitan Museum of Art director Philippe de Montebello will take up teaching after he steps down from the museum, becoming the first professor at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts to teach the history and culture of museums. De Montebello announced his departure from the Met in January, after 31 years as the director, saying he would leave at the end of the year or as soon as a successor is found. His appointment as an NYU professor will become effective whenever he leaves the museum. He will also advise the university on its plan for a new campus in Abu Dhabi, as well as continue to give public lectures and act as a a consultant to a number of museums abroad.

DALLAS—John R. Lane will retire from the Dallas Museum of Art at the end of May. Lane has acted as the director of the DMA for nearly ten years and worked in directors' offices at art museums across the country for 35. At the DMA, Lane has bolstered the collecting community in Dallas, added to the museum's contemporary holdings, and helped the museum raise more than $150 million for endowments and improvements. Prior to his work at the DMA, Lane served as the director of SFMOMA from 1987 to 1997 and the director of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh from 1980 to 1987. Deputy director Bonnie Pitman will succeed Lane.

ST. LOUIS—Washington University in St. Louis's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts has appointed Ronald Leax dean of the College of Art and the Graduate School of Art, beginning July 1. Leax succeeds Jeff Pike, who has served as dean since 1999, and will serve in the position for one year. A teacher at the university since 1986 and the director of the sculpture major since 1997, Leax won the Distinguished Teaching of Art Award from the College Art Association earlier this year. A search committee has been formed to find a successor to Leax.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Smithsonian Institution has announced the resignation of Sharon F. Patton, director of the National Museum of African Art, in December. Patton, 64, has led the museum for five years and said in a statement that she has achieved much of what she hoped to accomplish. During her directorship, the museum acquired the Walt Disney-Tishman collection of 500 pieces of African art. Before working at the Smithsonian, Patton served as the director of Oberlin College's Allen Memorial Art Museum, a professor of art history at the University of Michigan, and the chief curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Farewells
NEW YORK—Photojournalist Cornell Capa died May 23 at the age of 90. As a photographer for Life magazine from 1946 to 1954 and then as a member of Magnum Photos, Capa documented political events with a focus on social justice. He founded the International Center of Photography in 1974, which evolved from his International Fund for Concerned Photography, a fund he established in 1966 with the goals of assisting photographers, preserving photographic archives, and encouraging public engagement with the medium. Capa served as the director of the ICP for many years. He also helped establish his brother, Robert Capa's, legacy as a great war photographer.