When Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond announced last week that the director of its new Institute for Contemporary Art, Lisa Freiman, was stepping down, effective immediately, the news was doubly surprising, since the ICA’s building is scheduled to open in just a few months, and because no interim director was named.
Today, the school revealed its pick for interim director, Joseph H. Seipel, the former dean of VCU’s highly regarded School of Arts. The university’s provost, Gail Hackett, said in a statement that Seipel “brings exceptional and proven leadership to the ICA as it conducts an expedited national search for the next director of the institute.”
Seipel, who left VCU in 2016 after 40 years there, departing with the title dean emeritus, was, until recently, interim dean of the School of Art and Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.