Just out now:  The Seattle Art Museum has appointed Kimerly Rorschach as the museum’s new Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director.
Rorschach was the runner-up for the director’s job at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which went to Gary Tinterow.
Rorschach has been the Mary Duke Biddle Trent and James H. Semans Director of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University since 2004. She moves to SAM in the fall.
Rorschach recently became president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, succeeding Dan Monroe of the Peabody Essex Museum.
According to the museum’s release,
At the Nasher, Rorschach partnered with institutions from across the country and around the world to develop a program of high-profile and high impact exhibitions, from the 2008 exhibition El Greco to Velázquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III, organized in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914-1918 in 2010, a partnership with the Tate Britain and Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. Among her current exhibition projects are The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, which includes works by David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, Christian Marclay, Dario Robleto, and more and is currently on view at Seattle’s Henry Art Gallery; and Wangechi Mutu: Walk This Wayopening in 2013 and traveling to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The strong exhibition program established by Rorschach has been accompanied by a series of in-depth scholarly catalogues that are distributed worldwide.
That’s a pretty good track record, especially for a university museum.
I wish her luck there. Her predecessor, Derrick Cartwright, resigned in May 2011 after about two years in the job amid rumors that the museum’s financial situation was worse than he was given reason to believe.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Duke