Trevor Schoonmaker. Photo: Hank Willis Thomas.
Trevor Schoonmaker has been named to the newly created position of chief curator at Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, N.C. He also remains the museum’s founding curator of contemporary art, a position he has held since 2006. Schoonmaker replaces former senior curator Sarah Schroth, who was named the museum’s director in June.
The museum opened in 2005 in a 65,000-square-foot, Rafael Viñoly-designed building. Its contemporary art holdings include works by artists such as Christian Marclay, Ai Weiwei and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.
“As we work toward our 10-year anniversary, we’ve been building a contemporary collection,” Schoonmaker told A.i.A. by phone Thursday. “We’re thrilled to have acquired an amazing suite of collages by Wangechi Mutu, as well as early works by Kerry James Marshall and Fred Wilson. I’m also working, in collaboration with New Orleans Museum of Art curator Miranda Lash, on an interdisciplinary exhibition on Southern identity.”
Schoonmaker, 43, was an independent curator before joining the Nasher. At the museum, he organized the traveling exhibition “Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey,” the artist’s first U.S. survey, which opens next month at the Brooklyn Museum (Oct. 11, 2013-Mar. 9, 2014). Other shows he has curated are “The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl” (2010) and “Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool” (2008). Schoonmaker edited the book Fela: From West Africa to West Broadway (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
