NEW YORK—Paul W. Thompson, the director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, is stepping down to become the new rector of the Royal College of Art in London, reports the New York Times. The British-born director took over the Cooper-Hewitt in March 2001, following a stint as director of the Design Museum in London. At the Cooper-Hewitt, he has overseen a $64 million expansion to the museum’s Carnegie Mansion, which created 70 percent more exhibition space, a new library, and additional classrooms for the museum’s master’s program. Sixty-five percent of the fund-raising for the project has been completed during his tenure. Thompson will start his new position in September 2009.

ATLANTA—Bonhams has announced the establishment of an Atlanta, Georgia, regional office and has appointed Mary Moore Bethea regional representative for the Southeast. An appraiser and importer of European art and furniture, Bethea has been the principal of Mary Moore Fine Art & Antiques since 1995. She is a candidate member in good standing of the American Society of Appraisers. She worked previously as a real estate broker for more than two decades.

LOUISVILLE, Ky.—The Speed Art Museum has appointed Suzanne Weaver curator of contemporary art. Weaver joins the Speed after 13 years at the Dallas Museum of Art, where she served as associate curator of contemporary art. Before that, she worked as a curatorial associate of contemporary art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, exhibition coordinator at the Center for Research in Contemporary Art, University of Texas at Arlington, and editor in chief of Circa, a Texas journal of contemporary art. She starts at the Speed in mid-January.

Farewells
NEW YORK—Photographer Tracey Baran died last Tuesday after a brief illness at the age of 33, according to Artforum. Born in Bath, New York, Baran was represented by Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York, for the past six years. Baran’s many solo exhibitions have included a 2002 show at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. She participated in more than 30 group shows around the world, including at the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Bilbao, the Folkwang Museum in Essen, P.S.1 in New York, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Pusan Metropolitan Museum in Korea. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Miami Art Museum. She was awarded several grants and awards, including the Henry Buhl Foundation Grant’s first prize in 2002, the Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship in 2005, and the Santa Fe Center for Photography Juror’s Choice Grant in 2006.

PARIS—Belgian illustrator and cartoonist Guy Peellaert died of heart failure at the age of 74 on November 17. Pellaert had a surrealist, Pop-art style; he mixed painting, drawing, photography, and comics in his work. He designed numerous well-known album covers, including for David Bowie's Diamond Dogs and the Rolling Stones' It's Only Rock 'n' Roll. He designed posters for countless films, such as Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, and produced an acclaimed and much-imitated comic, Pravda.

LONDON—British printmaker Edgar Holloway, whose portrait and landscape etchings were central to Britain's Etching Revival during the 1920s and '30s, died on November 9 at the age of 94, the Telegraph reports. The son of a print seller, Holloway found success early; by the time he turned 20, his prints had been purchased by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum, and he had had two well-received exhibitions at the Twenty One Gallery in London. He joined the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, a community of Catholic craftsmen, in the 1940s, causing him to renounce his status in the fine art world and work as a letterer, cartographer, illustrator, and book-jacket designer. In the 1970s, he took up etching again, and in 1979, print dealers Garton & Co staged an exhibition of his work in London. Many other touring retrospectives around Britain followed. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1991.

ASAHIKAWA, Japan—Meissen porcelain painter Uwe Geissler died on November 17 after becoming ill while visiting the northern Japanese city of Asahikawa, Kyodo News reports. The German artist, 51, was in town for a two-day painting exhibition. Geissler worked in the famous Meissen porcelain factory for 11 years before becoming a freelance artist. He authored a number of books about how to paint porcelain in the Meissen style. Hospital staff have not disclosed the cause of his death, saying they want to speak to his family first.

BALTIMORE—Renowned Abstract Expressionist painter Grace Hartigan died on November 16 of liver failure at the age of 86, the Baltimore Sun reports. Hartigan moved to New York in 1945, quickly finding acceptance for her large, boldly colored abstract canvases. In 1953, Alfred H. Barr Jr., the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, made her first museum purchase. In 1960, she moved to Baltimore after marrying Johns Hopkins University scientist Winston Price. The move distanced her from the New York art scene, but she joined the faculty at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 1964 and founded its graduate school of painting, later called the Hoffberger School. Beginning in 1979, she returned to the public sphere with a MICA exhibition and a series of shows at Baltimore's C. Grimaldis Gallery. Her work is displayed at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

GENEVA—International art dealer Jan Krugier died on November 15 at the age of 80, Artforum reports. Krugier opened his first gallery in Geneva in 1962 on the advice of his friend, artist Alberto Giacometti. In 1987, he opened a branch in New York. He was the exclusive dealer for the Marina Picasso collection, the largest group of Picasso works outside of the Musée Picasso in Paris, and for the Alejandra, Aurelio, and Claudio Torres collection of works by Joaquin Torres-Garcia. Krugier was well known for his traveling exhibitions, and the French government presented him with the Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 1996 for his outstanding contribution to French art fairs.

SANTA BARBARA—Artist, teacher, and writer Walter Gabrielson died on November 12 of complications from a rare form of anemia, the Los Angeles Times reports. Gabrielson, 73, was a figurative artist who believed that art should tell stories. He founded the lithography department at San Fernando Valley State College, now Cal State Northridge, in 1966 and taught art there until 1981. He lived in Pasadena during his teaching years and shared a studio with artist and critic Peter Plagens. Gabrielson's work was shown in galleries across the U.S. and is included in a number of public and private collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.