Amy Smith-Stewart Named Chief Curator of Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

Amy Smith-Stewart has been named as the new chief curator of the Aldrich Modern Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, starting to be the initial woman to helm the non-amassing institution because its founding in 1964. Smith-Stewart, a curator at the Aldrich given that 2013, has an recognized track document of presenting the perform of emerging and underrecognized artists. She replaces Richard Klein, who declared his departure in January soon after top the museum for additional than 3 a long time.

“For practically ten many years Amy Smith-Stewart has been a central voice in the Aldrich’s exhibition programming, partnering with artists on shows that have captured the awareness of our audience and critics alike,” mentioned Aldrich director Cybele Maylone. “Serving as the museum’s chief curator is the organic following step in her leadership, and I am psyched to operate with her in this new job.”

Smith-Stewart began her career at P.S.1 Modern day Art Middle (now MoMA PS1) in Queens, New York, wherever she gave artists including Aleksandra Mir, Adrian Paci, Mika Rottenberg, and Taryn Simon their first solo museum displays. Following a temporary stint as curatorial advisor at New York’s Mary Boone Gallery, in which she mounted a range of group shows featuring new expertise, she launched her possess nomadic curatorial initiative on the city’s Lessen East Facet. This task, which ran from 2007 to 2009, was partly concurrent with her 2006–08 work as visitor curator for the Peter Norton assortment. Smith-Stewart furthermore curated reveals at the Socrates Sculpture Park and the Noguchi Museum, the two in Queens, and has served on the school of the MA programs at the Faculty of the Visible Arts and the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, both in New York.

Because arriving at the Aldrich in 2013, she has curated forty-two exhibitions, which includes debut solo museum exhibits by Genesis Belanger, Milano Chow, Lucia Hierro, Eva LeWitt, and Jessi Reaves, and surveys of artists which include Harmony Hammond, Karla Knight, Suzanne McClelland, Ruth Root, and Jackie Winsor. Smith-Stewart’s most new exhibition, 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone, tracks the evolution of feminist artwork tactics over 50 percent a century. On look at through January 8, 2023, the present revisits the Aldrich’s landmark 1971 Lucy Lippard–curated exhibition Twenty 6 Up to date Women Artists, presenting the function of the initial exhibiting artists alongside that of twenty-six female-figuring out and nonbinary emerging artists.

Smith-Stewart by now has designs for new initiatives at the museum. “It is a huge honor to be the initially woman to lead the Aldrich’s exhibitions section. The Aldrich has a very long record of supporting visionary artists at vital details of their careers,” she reported. “Next year, we will start a new artist honoraria initiative and embark on a venture to strengthen and update our campus to maximize prospects for artists and assure superior obtain for all communities. The artist is constantly at the center at The Aldrich. Jointly, with a inventive and collaborative team, we will get the job done to uncover and amplify new and underrecognized voices in the field.”

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