STAFF CHANGES AT GUGGENHEIM, TEMPORäRE KUNSTHALLE, AND CURATORS’ ASSOCIATION
The board of trustees of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has announced the appointment of Juan Ignacio Vidarte as chief officer for global strategies. Vidarte is currently general director of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and will retain this position, dividing his time between Bilbao and New York. Vidarte is expected to join the New York staff in November.
Vidarte will be a member of the foundation’s senior management team reporting to the new Guggenheim Foundation director, Richard Armstrong. Responsible for initiating and implementing new ventures outside existing foundation activities, Vidarte will initially work with Thomas Krens, outgoing Guggenheim Foundation director and senior adviser for international affairs, to insure the successful development of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. “Under Juan Ignacio’s leadership, the Guggenheim Bilbao has grown into a world-renowned cultural institution—winning awards and attracting almost eleven million visitors,” said William Mack, chairman of the board of trustees.
In other news from Artnet, Thomas Eller, longtime editor of Artnet’s German-language magazine and in recent years director of Artnet’s Berlin office, is leaving his current position to become the first director of the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, located on Schlossplatz, in the heart of the city. The new art space opens with a show by Berlin-based video artist Candice Breitz on October 29. An artist himself, known for photo installations, Eller won the Käthe Kollwitz Prize in 2006 from Cologne’s Käthe Kollwitz Museum.
Artinfo reports that the board of trustees of Independent Curators International announced yesterday that executive director Judith Olch Richards has resigned from the organization effective June 30, 2009. Richards joined the staff in 1980 as associate director and was appointed executive director in 1997. In the eleven years since, the organization has mounted about fifty exhibitions, which have been presented at a broad range of museums across the United States and in more than twenty other countries.
