WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Smithsonian Institution appointed Richard Kurin under secretary for history, art, and culture, the New York Times reports. Kurin had been serving as acting under secretary. He was previously director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage for more than two decades, and he directed the Smithsonian's national programs from 2004–07, according to a report from the American Folklore Society posted on the blog Museum Anthropology. Kurin has authored several books and was awarded the Smithsonian Secretary's Gold Medal for Exceptional Service as well as the American Folklore Society's Benjamin A. Botkin Prize for lifetime achievement in public folklore.

ATLANTA—Stephanie Heydt will join the staff of the High Museum of Art as curator of American art, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Heydt served most recently as the curator of collections and exhibitions at the Gulf Coast Museum of Art in Largo, Florida. She also worked as the Jakob Rosenberg Fellow in American Art at the Fogg Museum at Harvard University from 2002–05. She is a specialist in 19th- and early 20th–century art.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.—On March 1, Bruce Ambler Boucher will become the new director of the University of Virginia Art Museum, reports Artforum. Boucher has had a 35-year career as an architectural historian, educator, and museum curator. He will leave his current position as curator of European sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago, which he has held since 2002. At the Art Institute, he managed a staff of 10 and fund-raised for acquisitions and exhibitions. Boucher is also an authority on 16th-century Italian architect Andrea Palladio.

Farewells
MARINA DI MARATEA, Italy—Percussionist Max Neuhaus, a pioneer in sound installation art, died on February 3 of cancer in his home in Marina di Maratea, Italy, the Houston Chronicle reports. He was 69. Neuhaus achieved early fame as a performer but left his music career behind to focus on art. Working with non-musical sound, he created installations in unlikely places like Times Square or a Brooklyn subway station. He did not label his pieces or leave speakers visible, instead allowing pedestrians to discover the works on their own. Throughout his career, Neuhaus created permanent sound installations for Dia: Beacon in New York; the Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria; Documenta 9 in Kassel, Germany; and the Castello di Rivoli, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Turin, Italy. He also made temporary installations for the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1979 and the 1999 Venice Biennale. In 1989, he began making “circumscription drawings” of his pieces as “a way to publish without destroying the work.” A selection of these was on view last May through August at Houston’s Menil Collection, where Neuhaus’s piece Sound Figure was also permanently installed in May.

NEW YORK—Artist George Schneeman died on January 27 at the age of 74. The cause of death was heart failure, reports the New York Times. Schneeman began painting in the 1950s while stationed in Italy with the U.S. Army. He was mostly self-taught and drew inspiration from early Italian Renaissance painting, often producing small fresco portraits in egg tempera and landscapes of Tuscany. He also produced ceramics, collages, and much of the furniture in his two homes. His best-known work consisted of paintings and objects made through collaborations with poets — pieces that the Times describes as “neither pure visual art nor pure verbal art but something tantalizingly indefinable between the two.” He worked with the likes of Peter Schjeldahl, Anne Waldman, Larry Fagin, Ted Berrigan, and others. His art was not exhibited much in galleries, although in the 1970s and early ’80s he showed with Holly Solomon Gallery in SoHo. His work was well received within the artistic community but not often bought by collectors. Schneeman earned the majority of his income through his part-time jobs, which included gardening, teaching art, and English-as-a-second-language instruction.