BOSTON—The Harvard Art Museum has named José Ortiz deputy director, reports the blog The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research. Ortiz is currently deputy director and chief of finance and administration at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., where he has worked since 2005. Previously, Ortiz served as manager for administration at the Cloisters in New York and held administrative positions at the Smithsonian Institution's Anacostia Museum and the Museum of Television and Radio in New York. He starts at Harvard on March 2.

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y.—The Parrish Art Museum has appointed two adjunct curators, Klaus Ottmann and David Pagel, who will jointly serve as the museum's Robert Lehman Curator. Ottmann is an independent curator and author who has organized exhibitions at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt am Main and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C, and also curated the 2006 Santa Fe biennial. He teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Pagel is an assistant professor of art theory and history at Claremont Graduate University and a critic for the Los Angeles Times. He recently co-organized the exhibition "Damaged Romanticism: A Mirror of Modern Emotion," which debuted at the Blaffer Gallery at the Art Museum of the University of Houston this fall and will travel to the Parrish in February.

KANSAS CITY, Mo.—The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art has announced that Kimberly Masteller will be the museum's first Jeanne McCray Beals Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art. The newly endowed position is named after the late Jeanne McCray Beals, a longtime support of the Nelson-Atkins and a collector. Masteller joins the museum after working as assistant curator of Islamic and later Indian art at Harvard's Arthur M. Sackler Museum, where she has been since 2002. She will provide "conceptual artistic direction" for the interpretation of the Nelson-Atkins's south and southeast Asian collection, in advance of its eventual reinstallation.

LONDON—Dame Liz Forgan is expected to be named the new chair of Arts Council England, the Guardian reports. Forgan will be the first woman to lead the 62-year-old organization. She worked as the Guardian's women's editor in the late 1970s, moving then to broadcasting management at the BBC. She recently served as the chair of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, and in 2003, she was named chairwoman of the Scott Trust, the sole shareholder of the Guardian. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which appoints the head of Arts Council, has not yet confirmed Forgan's appointment, but the Guardian reports that she will assume the post in February.

Farewells
ASKEBY, Denmark—Composer and Fluxus artist Henning Christiansen died on December 10 at the age of 76. Christiansen started composing in the 1960s; he was also an active member of Fluxus and collaborated with such artists as Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, and his wife, Ursula Reuter Christiansen. A professor at the Art Academy in Hamburg, he was the subject of a large retrospective last year in Copenhagen and participated last month in the Wundergrund music festival. His work is currently on view in Berlin at Gelbe Music and at the Nordic Embassies.

NEW YORK—Artist, independent curator, and writer Willoughby Sharp died on December 17 of throat cancer, Artnet reports. He was 72. Sharp was a pioneering video performance artist known for his cutting-edge and often shocking pieces that aroused extreme emotions in viewers. His work included films, video installations, video performances, and, later in his career, cable television and broadcast TV programs. He was also interested in promoting other artists, co-founding and publishing Avalanche magazine with Liza Bear from 1970–76, which featured major European avant-garde artists on the New York art scene — most notably Joseph Beuys. He represented the U.S. in the Venice Biennale in 1976, and in 1977, he and Bear co-produced with Keith Sonnier the first transcontinental satellite artwork organized by artists in San Francisco and New York. Sharp taught at a slew of universities across the U.S., both as faculty and as a visiting artist, and his video and film works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as well as many others.