NEW DIRECTOR FOR NORWAY’S FOTOGALLERIET; ART HISTORIAN NAMED DEAN OF YALE
The Fotogalleriet foundation in Norway has announced the appointment of Leif Magne Tangen as its director for the period of 2009 through 2013. Currently gallery director at Pierogi Leipzig, Tangen will assume his future post on January 1. He succeeds Ida Kierulf, who has accepted the newly created position as curator and project coordinator at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo. Leif Magne Tangen studied photography at Robert Meyer School of Photography as well as art history at the University of Oslo. He started out as gallery manager at Fotogalleriet and later worked as a critic, contributing to various magazines. In the period of 2006 through 2007, he also served as an editorial board member of Billedkunst. His largest project to date is PHILIP, a science-fiction novel written in collaboration with, among others, Heman Chong at Project Arts Center in Dublin. In 2006, Tangen established, together with photographer Michael Moser, the nonprofit institution D21 Kunstraum Leipzig. Parallel with his efforts in Oslo, Tangen will continue to develop the experimental-film program for D21. Fotogalleriet, established in 1977, is the only Norwegian institution devoted to camera-based art.
In other news, Mary Miller, a professor of art history at Yale University and master of Saybrook (a residential college at the university) is now poised to become the first female dean of Yale, effective December 1, notes the Yale Daily News. Although the announcement was a surprise to some, Yale president Richard Levin emphasized in his remarks that the selection was in certain ways an easy one—although he recognized that some may be disappointed in Miller’s lack of a science background. “Mary is the embodiment of what you would look for in a Yale College dean,” Levin said in an interview after the ceremony. “She is a magnificent scholar, a devoted teacher, and a terrific master.” Miller joined the Yale faculty in 1981 and, since then, has served as the director of undergraduate studies and chair of the art-history department and chair of the Latin American studies department.
