NEW YORK—Radhika Subramaniam has been appointed the new director and chief curator of the Sheila Johnson Design Center at Parsons the New School for Design, Artforum reports. She also began, on July 1, as assistant professor of art and design history and theory at the school. Subramaniam, an independent curator, editor, and writer, most recently worked as director of cultural programs at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She was also the founding and executive editor of the interdisciplinary journal Connect: art.politics.theory.practice. She has taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, and New York University, and is co-curator of the 2009 edition of Art in Odd Places, a public art and performance festival that takes place in New York in October.

BENTONVILLE, Ark.—The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art announced that Don Bacigalupi has been hired as its new director. Bacigalupi is currently president, director, and CEO of the Toledo Museum of Art, where he oversaw the development and opening of the SANAA-designed Glass Pavilion in 2006. Before joining the Toledo Museum in 2003, he was executive director of the San Diego Museum of Art and before that, the director and chief curator of the University of Houston's Blaffer Gallery. Bacigalupi begins at Crystal Bridges, which is currently being built and may not open until 2011, in late October.

PURCHASE, N.Y.— Montreal native Patrice Giasson has been announced as the associate curator of art of the Americas at the Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase College, Artforum reports. Giasson, an expert on Latin American art, holds a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of Montreal and a master’s degree in Mesoamerican studies from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He has recently begun his new position, which was actually created several years ago as a result of a $1 million bequest from the estate of the late Alex Gordon, a prominent collector of pre-Columbian art.

Farewells
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Artist and illustrator Michael Mazur, 73, died August 18 of congestive heart failure, the Boston Globe reports. Mazur was a prolific illustrator known for his print-making, particularly monotyping. His work has been featured in international exhibitions, both solo and group, at galleries and museums worldwide, including New York's Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, and Metropolitan Museum of Art. A traveling retrospective of his prints was organized by Boston's Museum of Fine Arts in 2000. Mazur was also an educator, teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design, Brandeis University, and Harvard, and won accolades from a number of organizations, including a Distinguished Career Award from the Southern Graphics Council. Throughout his career he was engaged with Dante's Divine Comedy, and in 1997 he published an edition of that epic poem's  first part, Inferno, with 41 of his etchings and translation text by writer Robert Pinsky.

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y.—Art reporter and critic Christa von Hassell died on August 15 at the age of 95, the Southampton Press reports. Von Hassell, a descendant of Prussian military nobility, studied art history in Prague during World War II. She worked in an ammunition factory and taught English in East Germany after the war, escaping to London during the Soviet blockage of Berlin and then settling in Bonn. There she met and married West German diplomat Wolf Ulrich von Hassell. The couple relocated to New York in the 1970s, where Wolf became an ambassador and Christina began covering auctions at Christie's and Sotheby's. She wrote primarily for German publications Weltkunst Magazine and Die Welt.

LONDON—Barbara Morris, former curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, died July 15 at the age of 90, reports the Times (London). Morris was a leading force in the postwar generation of curators who helped to revitalize Britain’s museums after WWII. She was first recruited by the V&A’s circulation department in 1947 and eventually became deputy keeper of ceramics before retiring in 1978. An authority on the Arts and Crafts Movement, she was part of the team that put together the popular exhibition "Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts" in 1952, which highlighted Victorian progressive design. During her career she wrote books on the department store Liberty & Co., on Victorian embroidery, and on ceramics and glass. After retiring from the V&A she spent six years lecturing as part of Sotheby’s art courses. She also appeared on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow and was an active member of many societies, including the Decorative Arts Society, the Glass Circle, the Art Workers Guild, and the William Morris Society.