San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) welcomes a new senior curator of painting and sculpture. The position will be held by Gary Garrels as announced by SFMOMA director Neal Benezra.
Currently chief curator and director of exhibitions and public programs at the HammerMuseum, Los Angeles, Garrels will take charge from September 2008. The Senior Curator’s chair in the department of painting and sculpture, which is named after the late Elise S. Haas ¾ a well-known San Francisco collector and Museum trustee whose family endowed the position ¾ entails responsibilities for planning major exhibitions and recommending acquisitions. Garrel’s twenty-six-year career includes serving as a curator, author and lecturer in the country’s most prominent institutions.
Prior to joining the Hammer, where he organized not only many outstanding exhibitions but also led the formation of the museum’s contemporary collection, Garrels served as chief curator in the department of drawings and curator in the department of painting and sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Numerous shows he curated for the MOMA include the acclaimed retrospectives of Brice Marden (2006) and Dieter Roth (2004). Moreover, he had tenures as senior curator at the WalkerArtCenter, Minneapolis and as director of programs at the Dia Art Foundation, New York. His long résumé also includes activities as a board member of the Merce Cunningham Foundation and of The Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, and as a juror for the AmericanAcademy in Rome and Tate Gallery’s Turner Prize. Born in 1951, Garrels completed his undergraduate studies at NewCollege in Sarasota, Florida in 1974 and received an M.A. in art history from BostonUniversity in 1984.
