How many more curators will join the trade?
The move from the public to private sector of Guggenheim director Lisa Dennison might be the most visible, but she is not the only curator to cross what used to be an unscalable wall. Curator Jonathan Binstock left the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC last month to join Citibank (p12) as an art advisor, while curators Ingrid Dudek and Anne de Pietra both left museums to join Christie’s and the Spanierman Gallery, respectively, last year. At least four UK curators have also moved to the trade in the past year. These include Amin Jaffer who moved from the V&A to Christie’s in June; Emma Dexter from the Tate to Timothy Taylor Gallery in February; Ben Tufnell from the Tate and Nina Miall from the Royal Academy, both to Haunch of Venison late last year.
Directors on both sides of the Atlantic believe that these career changes, although still uncommon, represent acceptance of what was once unthinkable. Maxwell Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, says: “There is a blurring of what used to be clear boundaries between the museum and the trade. What has been surprising with Lisa Dennison is that the museum world is saying ‘how interesting’, not that it traduces the values of the museum.”
Read full article (Art Newspaper, September 13, 2007)
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