COURTESY AIC
Ever since Ann Goldstein stepped down as director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, at the end of 2013, after about four years on the job, people have whispered about where she might end up next, and her name has been mentioned in connection with the top jobs at many institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, where she was curator for 26 years. Today the Art Institute of Chicago announced that it has tapped her to be its deputy director, a newly created position, and the chair of its modern and contemporary art department, where she will be curator.
That chair position has been open since January, when the Art Institute promoted James Rondeau to be its director, replacing Douglas Druick, who served from 2011 to 2015.
“Ann Goldstein has built an extraordinary international career, dedicated to bringing modern and contemporary art alive with ambitious, artist-centered museum programs and curatorial projects,” Rondeau said in a statement released to the press. “Her dynamic vision and leadership experience are a perfect fit for both the rich legacy and the bold future we hope to chart for the Art Institute and our modern and contemporary programs.”
Goldstein’s curatorial accomplishments are numerous and include landmark exhibitions like “A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958–1968” (staged in 2004), “A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation” (in 1989, with Mary Jane Jacob), and the recent Mike Kelley retrospective that began at the Stedelijk and traveled to MoMA PS1 in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and MOCA in L.A.