NATIONAL GALLERY NAMES NEW CURATOR; RAUSCHENBERG MEMORIAL ONLINE
Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art, has announced that Mary L. Levkoff, curator of European sculpture and classical antiquities at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has been selected to become the gallery’s curator of sculpture and decorative arts in February. She will replace Nicholas Penny, the former senior curator of sculpture and decorative arts, who left to become director of the National Gallery in London. In 1989, during his tenure as LACMA’s director, Powell appointed Levkoff to the position of assistant curator of European painting and sculpture. She was subsequently promoted through the years to her present position. Levkoff is the organizing curator and primary author for “Hearst the Collector,” an international loan exhibition at LACMA, on view November 9 through February 1. Her distinguished record of acquisitions for LACMA includes a full-scale example of Jean-Antoine Houdon’s Voltaire Seated, and the museum’s first marble sculpture, Severed Head of Saint John the Baptist by Auguste Rodin.
Levkoff worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts before joining LACMA. She has contributed to numerous scholarly journals, encyclopedias, and exhibition catalogues and is the author of Rodin in His Time: The Cantor Gifts to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Said Powell, “She is a respected scholar, a dynamic curator, and a collegial collaborator across departments. We look forward to her leadership in acquisitions, scholarship, and exhibitions of sculpture.”
In other news, the New York Times states that a memorial service for the artist Robert Rauschenberg, who died on May 12, will be broadcast on the website Rrauschenberg.com tonight at 9 PM. Tributes to Rauschenberg published by Artforum_ can be found here.
