PETER GALASSI, CHIEF CURATOR OF MOMA’S DEPARTMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY, TO RETIRE

The Museum of Modern Art has announced that Peter Galassi, chief curator of MoMA’s department of photography, will retire in July. Galassi began his career at MoMA as a curatorial intern in the photography department in 1974; he was appointed chief curator in 1991. Galassi is currently on sabbatical until June.

“Over the course of his long career at the Museum of Modern Art, Peter Galassi has applied passion, commitment, and exemplary scholarship to further our understanding of photography as an art form that is central to modern and contemporary art,” said MoMA’s director, Glenn Lowry. “In addition to curating many important exhibitions and authoring publications, he has led the growth and transformation of MoMA’s photography collection. The museum is most grateful for those contributions, and we wish him all the best in the next phase of his career.”

Galassi has organized or co-organized more than forty shows at MoMA, including exhibitions on Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jeff Wall, Lee Friedlander, Andreas Gursky, Walker Evans, and Aleksandr Rodchenko. He is the author of Philip-Lorca diCorcia (MoMA, 1995) and Corot in Italy: Open-Air Painting and the Classical Landscape Tradition (Yale University Press, 1991). MoMA is to begin a search for Galassi’s replacement in the department in the coming months.