NEW YORK—Nicholas Baume has been named director and chief curator of New York’s Public Art Fund. Baume will make his way to New York from Boston, where he has acted as chief curator at the city’s Institute of Contemporary Art since 2003. During his time at the ICA, Baume oversaw the museum’s expansion into a much larger space on Boston’s waterfront in 2006 and curated its inaugural exhibition. He also established the museum’s "Momentum" series, which highlights work by emerging artists. Prior to landing at the ICA, he was director and curator of John Kaldor Art Projects and Collection in his native Sydney, Australia, and a curator at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. He will begin his work at the Public Art Fund on September 21.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The National Gallery of Art has announced that two years after the passing of former curator Philip Conisbee, Mary Morton will assume the role of curator and head of the department of French paintings. Morton comes to the National Gallery from the J. Paul Getty Museum, where she has served as associate curator of paintings since 2004. She has also worked as a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and has held teaching positions at the Rhode Island School of Design and at California's Art Center College of Design, Woodbury University, and Chapman University. She begins her new position in January.

ALLENTOWN, Pa.—Gregory J. Perry, executive director of the Allentown Art Museum, will become director of operations and administration at London's National Gallery, Allentown's Morning Call reports. Perry has been at the Allentown museum since the beginning of 2008. During his tenure, he has overseen the acquisition of a number of important collections, including a 19th- and 20th-century costume collection and holdings of ancient Asian Indian art, as well as organized an extremely popular exhibition of French masterworks. He departs Sept. 1, after which Robert Metzger, emeritus director and former chief executive of the Reading Public Museum, will step in as interim director and consultant.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—Curator Peter Nisbet is leaving the the Busch-Reisinger Museum at the Harvard Art Museum for the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the latter school's Daily Tar Heel reports. Nisbet will be the Ackland's first chief curator, starting Oct. 1. An expert in Russian and German 20th-century art, he has been a curator at Harvard since 1983. He received a bachelor's and master's from Cambridge and a doctorate from Yale University.

DETROIT—Kenneth Myers has been named the new chief curator of the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). Myers has worked at the DIA since 2005, serving as both curator of American art and the head of the American art department. His previous job experience includes teaching at Middlebury College, serving as assistant director for research and publications at the New Jersey Historical Society, and working as curator of American art at the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer Gallery of Art from 1999 to 2005. He has received fellowships from numerous institutions and written scholarly texts, including a book about James McNeill Whistler. The DIA also announced that Alan P. Darr, curator of European sculpture and decorative arts, has been promoted to head of the European paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts department. Also, Salvador Salort-Pons, assistant curator of European paintings, has been promoted to associate curator.

KANSAS CITY, Mo.—The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art has announced Colin C. Mackenzie as its new senior curator of early Chinese art. Mackenzie comes to the Nelson-Atkins with 20 years of previous experience as a professional in Asian art and 15 years of curatorial experience. He worked as the associate director and curator of Asian art at the Asia Society in New York, curator and head of the department of Asian art at Yale University Art Gallery, and, most recently, as curator of Asian art and adjunct professor at Middlebury College in Vermont. He has organized or helped organize more than 20 exhibitions and negotiated loans with the Chinese government. At the Nelson-Atkins, he will be in charge of interpreting and developing Chinese collections that span the Neolithic Period (c. 6000–2000 B.C.E.) through the Tang Dynasty (618–906 C.E.), as well as planning a forthcoming reinstallation of the Chinese galleries.