Curator Christophe Cherix will be head of a new super-department of some 74,000 objects at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Cherix will head the new department of prints and drawings, which will merge the museum’s existing department of prints and illustrated books with the department of drawings, effective July 1. He has been chief curator in the department of prints and illustrated books at the museum since 2010 after coming to the department as a curator in 2007.
Cherix has spearheaded a number of cross-department acquisitions, including the Seth Siegelaub collection (2010) and the Daled collection (2011). The 2009 acquisition of the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus collection was one significant joint acquisition between museum departments that indicated a softening of inter-disciplinary boundaries.
The museum has also announced that Connie Butler, who has been chief curator of drawings since 2006, is returning to Los Angeles, where she was a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art for 10 years before joining MoMA. Back in L.A., she will co-organize the biennial of Los Angeles art at the UCLA Hammer Museum and serve as a visiting professor in the art and curatorial practices program at the University of Southern California’s Roski School of the Arts. She will continue to work on exhibitions including an upcoming retrospective of Lygia Clark and a Mike Kelley retrospective, coming to MoMA PS1 this fall.
Butler has organized numerous exhibitions at the museum, including “Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave” (2009) and “Alina Szapocznikow: Sculpture Undone, 1955-1972” (2012-13). She also co-curated the 2010 edition of “Greater New York” at MoMA PS1.
