Photo by James Tolley

Godfrey Worsdale will be the new director of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, beginning in November.

John Bratby

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SAN FRANCISCO—The Walt Disney Family Museum has announced that Richard Benefield will be its founding executive director. The new museum, located in San Francisco's Presidio park, is scheduled to open in fall 2009. Benefield is currently the deputy director of the Harvard University Art Museums, a position he has held since 2002. He joined the Harvard organization in 1999 as assistant director for finance and administration, before which he worked as assistant director at the Rhode Island School of Design. 

GATESHEAD, England—The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art has announced the appointment of Godfrey Worsdale as the new director, beginning in November 2008. Worsdale oversaw the planning and launch of the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, serving as the institution's founding director since 2002. Before that he directed the Southampton City Art Gallery. He has also worked as a curator at the Southampton gallery and the British Museum and established the gallery Cultural Instructions in London. He is currently the vice chairman of the U.K.'s Visual Art and Galleries Association.

HAMBURG, Germany—Florian Waldvogel will be the new director of the Kunstverein Hamburg, Artforum reports via Der Standard. Waldvogel currently serves as chief curator at Rotterdam's Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art and will join the Kunstverein Hamburg next year. He served as the artistic director of the Kokerei Zollverein | Contemporary Art and Criticism in Essen from 2001 to 2003. He writes regularly on contemporary art and was a co-curator of Manifesta 6.

FRANKFURT, Germany—Katja Schroeder will serve as an interim director for the Frankfurt Kunstverein until a permanent replacement for Chus Martinez can be found, Artforum reports. Martínez recently left to work as chief curator at the Museu d'Art Contemporani in Barcelona. Schroeder has been a curator at the Kunstverein since 2003. Also, Tobi Maier, a curator at the Kunstverein since 2006, is moving to Ludlow 38 in New York; he will head up the gallery with Stefan Kalmár.

Farewells
BIRLING GAP, England—British painter Jean Cooke died on August 6 at the age of 81. Cooke was known largely as the wife of the late painter John Bratby but was also a painter in her own right, making mostly landscape and still life realist works. She started out as a potter, running her own potter's studio from 1950 to 1953, and began painting at the urging of Bratby after the two married in 1953. Her first solo exhibition was at the Establishment Club, a comedy venue, in 1963, after which she began showing regularly. She was a frequent participant in the Royal Academy's summer exhibitions and was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1965 and a full member in 1972. Bratby and Cooke divorced in 1977.