DENVER—The Denver Art Museum announced the appointment of Thomas Smith as associate curator of Western American Art and the planned retirement of Peter Hassrick, director of the Petrie Institute of Western American Art. Smith previously worked as curator of the art of the American West at the Tucson Museum of Art in Arizona. He plans to join the Denver museum in early November 2008, and will oversee several programs and exhibitions already in planning. Hassrick joined the museum in 2005, and during his short tenure raised more than $6 million to endow his department, nearly doubled the gallery space dedicated to Western American art, and developed a strong exhibition program. He will remain at the Institute through April 2009.

OKLAHOMA CITY—Carolyn Hill announced her plans to step down as director of the Oklahoma City Museum of Art at the end of the year. Hill, who was appointed director of the museum in 1994, will be succeeded by Glen Gentele as the new president & CEO.

NEW YORK—The Board of Trustees of Independent Curators International announced today that Executive Director Judith Olch Richards has resigned from the organization effective June 30, 2009. Richards joined iCI in 1980 as associate director and was appointed executive director in 1997. In the 11 years since, iCI has organized about 50 exhibitions, which have been presented at a broad range of museums across the United States and in more than 20 other countries. 

NEW YORK—The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has announced the appointment of Juan Ignacio Vidarte as Chief Officer for Global Strategies. Vidarte, currently Director General of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, will continue in that position, dividing his time between Bilbao and New York. Under his management, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has become an internationally acclaimed institution, winning awards and attracting almost eleven million visitors. Vidarte has published numerous articles and delivered talks on the museum’s management model and its economic impact. Vidarte is expected to join the New York staff in November 2008.

Farewells
SYDNEY—Leading Australian surrealist painter James Gleeson has died at the age of 92, reports The Australian. Gleeson exhibited over the past 70 years, showing his work at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria, and National Gallery of Australia. Widely known as the "father of Australian surrealism," he was heavily influenced by Salvador Dalí, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung; he also published as a poet and an art critic. Gleeson and his late partner, Frank O'Keefe, pledged all of their assets, worth an estimated $11 million, to the Art Gallery of NSW. It will be the most generous gift ever received by the museum.

NEW YORK—Iranian cartoonist and emigre Ardeshir Mohassess has died of a heart attack in Manhattan at the age of 70, reports the New York Times. Mohassess, whose work scathingly criticized Iranian society in images that were "preternaturally disturbing," according to the Times, fled to New York in 1976 after Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi took exception to the work, which was published in Iranian magazines and newspapers. After settling in New York, he was soon published in the Times, The Nation, Playboy, and elsewhere, and showed in galleries. The Asia Society in New York mounted a major exhibition of his work earlier this year, and shows in Tehran over the past three years have sold well.