CLEVELAND—Following the unexpected announcement in June that Cleveland Museum of Art Director Timothy Rub would be leaving for the Philadelphia Museum of Art after three years in his post, the Cleveland institution has announced its choice of an interim director: Deborah Gribbon, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. Gribbon, 61 and now in retirement, is the former director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, a position she held from 2000 to 2004. She stepped down in the fall of that year over differences with Barry Munitz, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Gribbon had worked at the Getty since 1984, rising through the ranks and helping to oversee the creation of the $1 billion, Richard Meier–designed Getty Center, which opened in 1997. She has agreed to lead the Cleveland Museum for roughly a year, starting Sept. 21, while it conducts a search for a permanent director.

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Ann Curry-Evans resigned unexpectedly this week as vice chairwoman of the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission and director of 40 Acres Art Gallery, Artnet reports. She did not offer a full explanation of her reasons, but only cryptically cited some information she had learned about Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who is also the founder of St. HOPE, a community development organization that runs 40 Acres. That information influenced her decision, she said. Curry-Evans also claimed that 40 Acres would close after its upcoming show in December, a statement rebutted by Johnson, who says that St. HOPE would determine the gallery's future.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Smithsonian Institution has chosen Eva J. Pell as its next undersecretary for science, the New York Times reports. Pell, 61, is currently the senior vice president for research and dean of the graduate school at Pennsylvania State University. At the Smithsonian, where she starts Jan. 4, she will report directly to Secretary G. Wayne Clough and oversee operations of the National Museum of Natural History, the National Air and Space Museum, the National Zoo and its Conservation and Research Center, and a host of other Smithsonian establishments. Pell was a professor in the department of plant pathology at Penn State for more than 35 years.

LOS ANGELES—The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has named Britt Salvesen the new head and curator of both the department of photography and the department of prints and drawings, with plans to combine the two under her leadership. Salvesen, who starts at LACMA in mid-October, previously served as director and chief curator at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. During her tenure there, she was named a Center for Curatorial Leadership fellow in 2009 and awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency in 2008 and a Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship in 2007. She previously worked at the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.

GATESHEAD, England—Laurence Sillars has been named the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art's new chief curator. Sillars comes from Tate Liverpool, where he has been curator of exhibitions and collections for five years. There he has curated numerous exhibitions and projects, as well as co-curated the first Turner Prize exhibition to be held outside of London, in 2007. He was also part of the curatorial team that organized the last two Liverpool Biennial International exhibitions. Sillars previously worked at the Arts Council Collection, Whitechapel Gallery, and the Chisenhale Gallery in London. He begins at the Baltic on Nov. 2.

LEIPZIG, Germany—Artist Neo Rauch has resigned as professor of painting at Leipzig Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports via Artforum. Rauch, a leading figure of the New Leipzig School of art, has been at the academy for the past three years. His post will be filled by Cologne painter Heribert C. Ottersbach.

SAN DIEGO—Curator Stephanie Hanor is leaving the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego for Mills College in Oakland, Calif., the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. Hanor has been the senior curator and head of the museum's curatorial department since 2007, before which she served as curator, from 2004, and assistant curator, from 2001. She organized a number of significant exhibitions, including "Jasper Johns: Light Bulb," and oversaw the installation of two large-scale, permanent works outside the museum. She will start as assistant dean at Mills and director of the school's art museum in the fall.