The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y., has announced that Janne Sirén will be its new director. The 11th director of the museum, Sirén replaces Louis Grachos, who left for AMOA-Arthouse at the Jones Center, Austin, at the end of 2012 after a decade as director in Buffalo. He will take up his new post late spring or early summer, according to a museum representative.
Sirén has been director of the Helsinki Art Museum, which focuses on modern and contemporary art, since 2007. He directed the Tampere Art Museum, which is devoted primarily to Finnish art from the 19th century and later and is located in the lake district of Southern Finland, from 2004 to 2007. Previous to that, he was an assistant art history professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He earned a PhD at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, in 2001.
He was involved with the failed effort to bring the Guggenheim Museum to Helsinki as part of its global expansion plan. That proposal was voted down by the city board in May 2012.
