When Michael Darling leaves his job in July as modern and contemporary curator at the Seattle Art Museum to become chief curator at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, it’s good news for Chicago, bad for Seattle. He’s an extraordinary gifted curator. Objects speak to him, suggesting patterns and relationships that root and waken in his exhibitions.
He is not, however, only the second curator to hold the modern and contemporary slot at the Seattle Art Museum.
New York Times:
Mr. Darling’s appointment reverses his last professional transition, which took him out of a thriving contemporary art environment — the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles — to Seattle, where he became only the second curator of that museum’s modern and contemporary collection. (more)
The second curator in the slot was Bruce Guenther, hired in the 1970s. He too left SAM to become chief curator at Chicago’s MoCA MCA. He’s now back in the region as chief curator at the Portland Art Museum.
Between Guenther and Darling were Patterson Sims, Trevor Fairbrother and Lisa Corrin. (Sims, Fairbrother and Corrin were also deputy directors, signaling the importance the museum places on the field.) How could the NYT have disappeared four people?
Correction, please.
Another quick correction. It is the MCA not MoCA.
Thank you Don.