HOUSTON—Sarah Whiting has been named dean of the Rice University School of Architecture, mediabistro.com blog UnBeige reports. Whiting has been a professor at Princeton University since 2005, before which she taught at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design for six years and at the University of Kentucky, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the University of Florida. She is also an expert in urban and architectural theory and an architect herself, having worked at Rem Koohlaas's Office for Metropolitan Architecture. In addition, she founded, with husband Ron Witte, the practice WW Architecture, whose current projects include renovations at the Juilliard School and a museum of art and design for San Jose State University. Whiting begins at Rice on January 1, 2010.

SEATTLE—The board of the Frye Art Museum has chosen Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker as the museum's new director, the Seattle Times reports. She succeeds Midge Bowman, who is retiring. Birnie Danzker is currently an independent scholar and curator. She has organized past exhibitions at the Frye, where she begins her new post Oct. 1. She previously worked as director of the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich.

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—Hope Alswang, director of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, has resigned from her post, effective immediately, reports the Associated Press. Alswang is leaving to pursue other opportunities, according to school officials. She was appointed director of the museum in September 2005, following an eight-year tenure as president and CEO of the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vt. She is credited with boosting attendance and supervising building restorations at the RISD institution, which in May announced it would close for all of August as a cost-cutting measure. Ann Woolsey, assistant director of planning, will serve as interim director.

SARASOTA, Fla.—John Wetenhall, executive director of Florida State University's John and Marble Ringling Museum of Art, has also resigned from his post, effective immediately, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports. Wetenhall has led the museum for the past eight years, during which time he oversaw the establishment of a $55 million endowment, the expansion of the institution's facilities and collections, and a restoration of the Ringling mansion Cà d’Zan, which is part of the museum. Marshall Rousseau, a Ringing Museum board member, will act as interim director while the university searches for a successor to Wetenhall.

SANTA FE, N.M.—The board of directors of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum has named Carl Brown interim director, New Mexico Business Weekly reports. He replaces George G. King, who left the museum in May to run the American Federation of Arts in New York while the board conducts a national search for a permanent director. Brown has been the O'Keeffe Museum's director of finance and human resources since 2005.

CHICAGO—Elizabeth Smith, chief curator of Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, will resign from her post August 31, reports the Chicago Tribune. According to both Smith and MCA President Madeleine Grynsztejn, the resignation was Smith’s decision and was not prompted by creative differences or the recession. Smith was appointed the MCA’s chief curator in 1999 and has concurrently held the title of deputy director for programs since 2005. She is known for organizing major exhibitions, such as a retrospective of Lee Bontecou's sculptures and drawings in 2004 and Jenny Holzer’s "Protect Protect" in 2008, and for co-curating the exhibition “At the End of the Century: 100 Years of Architecture” in 1999.

BALTIMORE—Kirsten Hileman will be the new curator of contemporary paintings and sculptures at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Baltimore Sun reports. She will replace Darsie Alexander, who resigned earlier this year to accept a curatorial position at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Hileman is set to leave her position of the past eight years, associate curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., to start at the Baltimore museum on Nov. 2. Her first project at the museum will be coordinating the installation of a nationally touring exhibition of Andy Warhol's later paintings, scheduled to open in Baltimore in October 2010.