FRESNO, Calif.—The Fresno Art Museum has hired Michael Mazur to be its new executive director, the Fresno Bee reports. Mazur has worked in management positions at oil and energy companies for more than 25 years. He has long had a passion for the arts, which he recently began developing into a new career by interning at the Guggenheim Museum in 2006 and earning a master of arts in arts administration from Columbia University, Teacher's College in 2007. He served as a trustee on the board of the Monterey Museum of Art from 1997 to 2001. Mazur starts at the Fresno Museum on Monday.

PHOENIX—Sara Cochran has joined the staff of the Phoenix Art Museum as curator of modern and contemporary art. She moves to the Phoenix museum from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where she worked as an assistant curator from 2004 to 2008. She also worked in the past as a curatorial assistant at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, a researcher for the education department at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and curator of the East Wing collection at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

TAMPA, Fla.—The board of trustees of the Tampa Art Museum has announced that Todd Smith will succeed Ken Rollins as the new executive director of the museum, Tampa Bay Online reports. Smith, who begins October 6, was most recently the executive director of the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C. Before working there, he held executive leadership positions at the Knoxville Museum of Art in Tennessee and the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, N.D.

SALEM, Mass.—The Peabody Essex Museum has appointed Trevor Smith its first curator of contemporary art. Smith's past experience includes working in Australia from 1992 to 2003 at the Biennale of Sydney and the Art Gallery of Western Australia; serving as senior curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art from 2003 to 2006, where he co-curated the award-winning traveling exhibition "Andrea Zittel: Critical Space"; and, most recently, working as curator-in-residence at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. He will work with other Peabody curators to incorporate contemporary art into various exhibitions, public spaces, and projects throughout the museum.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand—Artspace has appointed Emma Budgen its new director. Burdgen joins Artspace after two and a half years at the Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts in Manukau City, New Zealand. She is credited with having transformed the center from a regional organization into a world-class public art gallery. Budgen replaces current director Brian Butler, who will return home to Los Angeles. Artspace conducts an international search for a new director every three years.

PITTSBURGH—The Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the advisory board of the Three Rivers Arts Festival have appointed Colleen Russell Criste acting director of the festival, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. Criste is currently the deputy director of the Andy Warhol Museum. Ben Harrison, associate curator for performance at the Warhol, has been named acting curator of performance for the festival. Both Criste and Harrison will maintain their roles at the Warhol. The Carnegie took over the festival last week, saying it was concerned about the organization's "financial health," and eliminated the executive and associate director positions.

Farewells
NEW YORK—Stephen A. Kliment, former editor in chief of the Architectural Record, died on September 10 of cancer, the Record reports. He was 78. Kliment led the Record from 1990 to mid-1996, during which time he oversaw a redesign of the magazine, its 100th anniversary celebration in 1991, and special issues on the new workplace and social housing. He served as an acquisitions editor at John Wiley & Sons before joining the Record, a partner with Caudill Rowlett Scott from 1968 to 1990, and editor of Architecture and Engineering News from 1960 to 1968. A major force in both the architecture and publishing worlds, he served on the board of directors for the New York chapter of the American Institute for Architects, taught writing courses, and was an honorary member of the National Organization of Minority Architects.