Carlos Basualdo will take over as the Marion Boulton “Kippy” Stroud Deputy Director and Chief Curator, and Jessica Todd Smith will become the next Director of Curatorial Initiatives and Susan Gray Detweiler Curator of American Art, according to Sasha Suda’s announcement today. For the past five years, Basualdo has served as the senior curator of contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and for the previous two years, Smith has served as the Susan Gray Detweiler Curator of American art.
Sasha Suda said, “The Philadelphia Museum of Art is at a critical juncture as it contemplates the expansion of its collections and its future initiatives. “Carlos Basualdo has a sizable international presence and will strengthen our relationships with artists, museums, and collectors on a global scale. InIn order to maximise the museum’s programme, he will direct the publishing programme, library, archives, and curatorial teams. Jessica Todd Smith is a seasoned curator whose keen interest in audience participation and thoughtful viewpoint will spearhead a fresh approach to curatorial practise at the PMA.
The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia was founded by Stroud, who was also a longtime Trustee of this museum. Suda continued, “We are grateful to the Kippy Stroud Foundation for making an extraordinarily generous gift to endow the chief curator position in memory of Stroud.”
A museum curator with years of experience, Basualdo has worked on a variety of exhibitions. He has organised numerous well-attended shows, including one about Bruce Nauman that was honoured with a Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2009. He worked together with Erica Battle in 2012 to produce a presentation on Marcel Duchamp’s legacy. Live dance and music performances were also a part of this. He collaborated on the curation of a Barbara Chase Riboud exhibition in 2014, which attracted a lot of interest. He will co-curate a Jasper Johns exhibition with the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2021–2022.
In addition to a gift of paintings by Jasper Johns in 2014, a donation of sculptures by Cy Twombly from the Cy Twombly Foundation, works of new media from the Peter and Mari Shaw collection, and a gift of drawings by Giuseppe Penone in 1999, Basualdo has assisted in bringing in many significant works of art.
He has served as a curator for a variety of works of art. He oversaw Tropicalia: A Revolution in Brazilian Culture (1967–1972), an exhibit that debuted in 2005 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Additionally, he organised the 1999 exhibition Untitled: The Public Works of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, which was presented at the Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango in Bogotá, Colombia, the Museo Alejandro Otero in Caracas, and the Museu de Arte Moderna in So Paolo.
In addition to teaching art at the IUAV Universitá degli studi in Venice, Italy, from 2004 to 2010, Basualdo served as the curator at MAXXI Arte in Rome, Italy, from 2010 to 2013. In 2000, he served as one of the co-curators of Documenta11 in Kassel, Germany.
Smith graduated from Yale University with an M.A. and a Ph.D. She completed an internship at the Harvard University Art Museums and the Metropolitan Museum of Art before working in the department of prints, drawings, and photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She graduated summa cum laude with an A.B. from Harvard University.
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