New Curator Named for Museums

Helen Molesworth was appointed as the first full curator of contemporary art of the Harvard University Art Museums in an announcement last Friday.

Molesworth’s appointment follows the departure of former associate curator of contemporary art, Linda Norden this past June and marks a major part of the University’s recent efforts to expand the presence of contemporary art on campus.

Molesworth will officially take office Feb. 5.

The Crimson reported earlier this month on several large-scale exhibitions of contemporary art on campus including “Nominally Figured: Recent Acquisitions in Contemporary Art” at the Fogg Museum which ended Oct. 15 and “German Art of the 1980s from the Heliod Spiekermann Collection,” at the Busch-Reisinger Museum which runs through Dec. 3.

Faculty and staff at Harvard have reacted positively to news of Molesworth’s appointment.

“[Molesworth] is a terrific choice. She is one of the most brilliant and highly accomplished curators of contemporary art, someone who possesses great intellectual gifts and a visual imagination,” Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, professor of history of art and architecture, wrote in an e-mail.

Molesworth comes to Harvard from the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, where she served as chief curator of exhibitions, a position she held since 2003, according to the museum’s press release.

During her tenure as chief curator at the Wexner, Molesworth organized several critically acclaimed exhibits such as “Part Object Part Sculpture” in 2005, which included Marcel Duchamp’s controversial and iconic ready-made sculpture, “Fountain,” according to the museum’s Web site. Her most recent curatorial effort at the Wexner Center is the exhibition “Shiny,” an exploration of artworks with reflective surfaces and included pieces by Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons among others.

Once Molesworth arrives at Harvard in February, her main focus will be “learning the collection and augmenting [the collection] with acquisitions,” Molesworth said. She plans to begin her tenure with an exhibit featuring the works of outsider artists.

“I’m working on an exhibition called ‘Solitaire,’ which focuses on three painters who came of age in New York City during the 1960s: Lee Lozano, Joan Semmel, and Sylvia Plimack Mangold,” Molesworth said. “It is very much a project that stems from my interest in the oxymoronic category of feminist painting.”

Despite her new role at Harvard, Molesworth will continue to be affiliated with the Wexner Center.

“I will have an ongoing relationship with the Wexner and I will remain as guest curator,” Molesworth, who’s currently working on an exhibition featuring the works of artist Luc Tuyman, said. That exhibit is scheduled to open at the Wexner Center in the fall of 2009.

Although Molesworth’s contract does not specify any teaching duties, Lajer-Burcharth said she hopes that she will have an influence on students.

“I definitely hope she will work with students of both levels, and I am looking forward to working with her as well,” she said. “She is surely one of the leading persons in her field.”