WASHINGTON, D.C.—Purdue University president France A. Córdova has beennamed to the Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents as a citizenmember, one of nine who serve alongside representatives from the Senateand the House of Representatives, as well as the United States’s chiefjustice and the vice president. She began her six-year term on Monday,ArtDaily reports. Prior to joining Purdue, Córdova served as chancellorat the University of California at Riverside and as a professor at theuniversity’s Santa Barbara campus, and as chief scientist at NASA. Sheis a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the NationalScience Foundation, and the Association for Women in Science, amongother organizations. Córdova replaces noted arts philanthropist Eli Broad, who left in April.

AKRON, Ohio—Jon T. Trainor has been named director of development for the Akron Art Museum, effective October 12, ArtDaily reports. He arrives from the Akron General Development Foundation, where he served as president for 23 years. Trainor, an experienced fundraiser, is also a member of the Ohio Association of Healthcare Philanthropy and the National Association for Healthcare Philanthropy.

NEW YORK—Harry Gugger, a partner at the architecture firm of Herzog & de Meuron, has announced that he will leave the company at the end of 2009 to create his own company. Gugger has been with the firm for 19 years and oversaw the firm’s design for the Schaulager Museum in Basel, Switzerland. He has recently been heading the team in charge of the Tate Modern’s expansion in London. Ascan Mergenthaler will replace Gugger on that project.

PHOENIX, Ariz.—The Heard Museum has appointed Letitia Chambers as the museum's new director, succeeding Frank Goodyear, who is retiring after 10 years in the position. Chambers was founder and CEO of Chambers Associates, a policy consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., for two decades. She sold the firm in 2001 to Navigant Consulting, where she became managing director. As an educator, Chambers has worked as both a classroom teacher and administrator. At the Heard, her appointment marks the first time that the museum’s top position has been held by a person of American Indian heritage.

BENTONVILLE, Ark.—The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, now under construction, has filled several key positions in the past six months. Ron Williams has been named the museum’s director of information technology, specializing in operational management and technology systems. He previously worked at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. Manuela Well-Off-Man is joining the museum as assistant curator. She was most recently the curator of art at the Montana Museum of Art and Culture at the University of Montana in Missoula. Other recent hires at Crystal Bridges are Kendall Curlee as the museum’s manager of communications, Jennifer De Martino as collections management specialist, Amon Easely as the artist educator for Crystal Bridges’s communities programs, and Rhonda Houser as human resources manager.

Farewells
NEWTON, Mass.—Boston arts supporter Elaine Rosenfeld died on Sept. 19 at age 91, the Boston Globe reports. The cause was lung cancer. Rosenfeld helped found the Boston Arts Festival and acted as a benefactor to such institutions as the Museum of Fine Arts and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, among others. An overseer for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Boston Lyric Opera, Rosenfeld herself was also an artist, at one time showing in a solo exhibition of paintings at Massachusetts’s DeCordova Museum.

NEWTON, Mass.—Art and antiques dealer Selma Koss Holtz succumbed to cancer on Sept. 9, the Boston Globe reports. She was 78. Holtz was a popular collector and dealer in New England, and was often known to take young dealers under her wing and help them to launch their careers. Perhaps most memorably, Holtz is credited with exposing as a fake a painting falsely attributed to Impressionist artist John Henry Twachtman, who died years before the buildings depicted in the painting were built. Holtz often lent her extensive collection out to various art museums, most notably the Ogunquit Museum of American Art in Maine, her home state. That museum will hold a memorial exhibition in dedication to her in the spring.