Tuesday, March 20, 2018
CHICAGO—Deputy Director, Chair and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Ann Goldstein announced today the appointment of Caitlin Haskell as the new Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of International Modern Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Haskell most recently served as Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), where she focused on international modern art from the period of 1900 to the 1960s in research, acquisitions, and the presentation of SFMOMA’s permanent collection; the generation of internationally respected loan exhibitions; and the programming of the museum’s Alexander Calder gallery. Haskell will join the Art Institute part-time on March 26, 2018, and full-time in July 2018.
In announcing Haskell’s appointment in Chicago, Goldstein shared: “Caitlin will be a perfect addition to the Art Institute of Chicago and brings tremendous vision and ingenuity to our museum. Her exceptional experiences over the past decade at SFMOMA, the Menil Collection, and the Center for the Study of Modernism make her uniquely capable in expertly realizing the ambitious goals for International Modern Art at the Art Institute. We are thrilled for her to dive into our collection galleries, and lead and enrich our Modern collections and program.”
Haskell shared: “It is a tremendous honor to be joining the Art Institute of Chicago. I have such admiration for Ann and her team, and I look forward to building on the outstanding traditions of scholarship and exhibition making that have long distinguished the Art Institute as one of the world’s great museums for modern art. This is a dream collection for any twentieth-century specialist to inherit, and to be able to grow it and activate it in a city as vital as Chicago is an opportunity I could not be more excited to embrace.”
Haskell began her work at SFMOMA in 2012 as Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture and was promoted to Associate Curator in 2016. Her exhibitions at SFMOMA include the forthcoming project René Magritte: The Fifth Season (May 19 to Oct. 28, 2018), which she will continue to oversee, as well as: Alexander Calder: Scaling Up (2018–2019); Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed (2017, curated with Gary Garrels, Sheena Wagstaff, and Jon-Ove Steihaug); Walter De Maria: Surface Waves (2017–2018); Open Ended: Painting and Sculpture, 1900 to Now (2016–Ongoing, co-curated with Gary Garrels and Janet Bishop); Alexander Calder: Motion Lab (2016–2017); Portraits and Other Likenesses from SFMOMA (2015, Co-curated with Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins); American Icons: Masterworks from SFMOMA and the Fisher Collection (2015, Assistant Curator with Gary Garrels, on view at the Grand Palais, Paris, and the Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence, France); The Elise S. Haas Bequest: Modern Art from Matisse to Marini (2013); Paul Klee’s Circus (2012–2013); and Paul Klee and Josef Albers: Parallel Construction (2012).
Prior to joining SFMOMA, Haskell was a distinguished Vivian L. Smith Foundation Fellow at the Menil Collection in Houston, and served as a research and teaching assistant to renowned art historian Richard Shiff in the Center for the Study of Modernism at the University of Texas at Austin. She has published, lectured, and presented research on a wide range of subjects related to modern and contemporary art, in the United States and Europe.
Haskell earned her BA in art from Davidson College, North Carolina, and her MA and PhD in art history from the University of Texas at Austin, writing her dissertation on the paintings and critical reception of Henri Rousseau.
Image: Caitlin Haskell, Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of International Modern Art. Photo by Andria Lo.
