LAGUNA BEACH, Calif.—The Laguna Art Museum has named Grace Kook-Anderson as its curator of exhibitions, the Laguna Beach Independent reports. The appointment comes almost two years after Tyler Stallings, the museum's former curator, departed. Kook-Anderson recently served as assistant curator of "Amateurs" at the California College of the Arts's Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art under renowned curator Ralph Rugoff. She also participated in the triennial event "Bay Area Now" at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as a guest curator. She will start at the Laguna museum on October 6.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, announced that he will step down in January 2009, the Associated Press reports. Gioia has led the organization for six years, during which time he increased the organization's budget 20 percent and made efforts to engage people not traditionally involved in the arts. His years of leadership have been noted for their lack of controversy. He plans to work part time at the nonprofit research and policy center the Aspen Institute when he resigns, and to return to being a poet.

LOS ANGELES—The J. Paul Getty Museum curator Catherine Hess will move to the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, to be the curator of European art, the Los Angeles Times reports. Hess has worked at the Getty for 24 years, organizing many critically acclaimed exhibitions, including the current show, "Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture." She succeeds Shelley Bennett at the Huntington, who has become a senior research associate there.

SAN FRANCISCO—The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts has appointed Betti-Sue Hertz director of visual arts programming, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Hertz joins the YBCA after eight years at the San Diego Museum of Art, where she served as curator of contemporary art. Before her time in San Diego, she directed the Longwood Arts Project in the Bronx, was the development director at Thread Waxing Space in New York, and worked as an independent curator. Hertz takes up her post at the YBCA in December.

NEW YORK—The Armory Show has appointed Deborah Harris the managing director of the Armory Show – Modern, a new section of the fair dedicated to historically significant modern and contemporary art. Harris has worked in magazine publishing for more than 20 years, including as the publisher of ARTINFO's sister publication Modern Painters, advertising director of Art in America, and advertising manager of ArtNews. Harris will oversee sales, marketing, and general management of the section and will report to Katelijne De Backer, executive director of the Armory Show.

MINNEAPOLIS—Darsie Alexander will replace Philippe Vergne as the chief curator of the Walker Art Center. Currently a curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Alexander will begin at the Walker on November 10. She started out at the Baltimore museum in 2000 as an associate curator and since 2005 has served as senior curator and head of the contemporary art department. Before moving to Baltimore, she worked as assistant curator of photography at MoMA in New York. According to the Star Tribune, Alexander's husband, David Little, is rumored to be the lead candidate for the position of photography curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

MIAMI BEACH, Fla.—As Art+Auction's Sarah Douglas speculated a few weeks ago on her blog, the Bass Museum of Art has named Silvia Karman Cubiña the museum's new executive director and chief curator, according to the Miami Herald. Assuming the post on October 1, Cubiña succeeds Diane Camber, who retired in June 2007. Cubiña is the founding director of the Moore Space, an alternative art gallery in Miami that recently announced it will shut its doors in October. She has also worked as an independent curator and at the Institute of Visual Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Mexican Museum in San Francisco.

NEW YORK—The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced that Thomas P. Campbell will succeed Philippe de Montebello as the museum's next director. Campbell, who will assume the directorship on January 1, 2009, is currently a curator in the department of European sculpture and decorative arts as well as supervising curator of the museum's Antonio Ratti Textile Center. He organized the critically acclaimed exhibitions "Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence" in 2002 and "Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor" in 2007. Campbell started at the Met as an assistant curator in the department of European sculpture and decorative arts in 1995.