CCL Fellowship Participants

Eik Kahng now serves as Assistant Director and Chief Curator at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. She moved to Santa Barbara shortly after her hugely enlightening stint at the Center of Curatorial Leadership as a member of the Class of 2009. While she continues to originate and travel scholarly exhibitions, such as Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910-12 and most recently, Delacroix and the Matter of Finish, she is also deeply involved in the overall administration of her mid-sized institution. SBMA is in the late planning stages for a much needed renovation and Eik participates in weekly renovation meetings, dealing with everything from geothermal wells, architectural designs, and the city permitting process. Currently, she is facilitating a highly focused exhibition called The Paintings of Moholy-Nagy: The Shapes of Things to Come, guest curated by art historian, Joyce Tsai (UF, Gainesville) and oversees two support groups called The Dead Artists Society and D.A.S. ii.  As often as possible, Kahng attempts to maintain contact with her CCL classmates on whom she continues to rely for guidance.

Kahng’s previous curatorial employment includes positions at the Kimbell Art Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Walters Art Museum. Her curatorial formation owes much to the invaluable year she spent at the National Gallery of Art under the mentorship of the late Philip Conisbee as one of the first CAA Professional Development fellows back in 1994-95, and her developing understanding of museum administration has been impelled by the training she received through the CCL. She works closely with SBMA director, Larry J. Feinberg, whose administrative example she strives to emulate. Kahng graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1985 and received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1996. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards and has published and lectured widely with a particular emphasis on 18th- and 19th-century French painting and its critical reception.

Mary-Kay Lombino is The Emily Hargroves Fisher '57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator and Assistant Director of Strategic Planning at The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College where she oversees the contemporary art and photography collections, exhibitions, and publications. Prior to joining the staff at Vassar she served as Curator of Exhibitions at the University Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach for six years and Assistant Curator at UCLA Hammer Museum for five years. Her exhibitions include The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation (2013), Utopian Mirage: Social Metaphors in Contemporary Photography and Film (2007); Off the Shelf: New Forms in Contemporary Artists’ Books (2006); Candida Höfer: The Architecture of Absence (2005); UnNaturally (2003), By Hand: Pattern Precision, and Repetition in Contemporary Drawing(2001). She has also organized solo shows for numerous artists including Marco Maggi, Eirik Johnson, Phil Collins, Ken Price, Euan Macdonald, Bob Knox, Alice Könitz, and Mungo Thomson.

Lombino’s 2013 publication The Polaroid Years (DelMonico Books/Prestel) recently won first place for Outstanding Catalogue from the Association of Art Museum Curators. In 2009, she was selected as one of ten fellows for the prestigious Center for Curatorial Leadership program, a six-month fellowship designed to train and support talented curators in realizing their potential for leadership in the field. Also in 2009 she was one of two recipients of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Research Fellowship. In 2006 she was one of ten recipients of the Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship. Lombino received a B.A. in Art History from University of Richmond, Virginia in 1989 and an M.A. in Art History and Museum Studies from University of Southern California in 1995.

Kevin Salatino was appointed Director of the Art Collections at The Huntington in September, 2012. Prior to that, from 2009–2012, he was Director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine. From 2001–2009, Kevin was Curator and Head of the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and from 1991–2000 he was Curator of Graphic Arts at the Getty Research Institute. Kevin earned his AB from Columbia University and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, and has taught at Middlebury College and the University of Pennsylvania. He has lectured and published widely on subjects as diverse as fireworks (Incendiary Art: The Representation of Fireworks in Early Modern Europe, 1999, to be published in a revised French edition in 2014 as Feu d’Artifice et Pouvoir), Fra Angelico (the subject of his dissertation), the erotic drawings of Henry Fuseli, the Grand Tour, Goya, James Ensor, and George Bellows, among others. Recent publications include Edward Hopper’s Maine (2011), and William Wegman: Hello Nature (2012). In 2012, he delivered The Clarice Smith Distinguished Lecture in the History of Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on the subject of “Edward Hopper and the Burden of (Un)Certainty.”

Since arriving at The Huntington, Kevin has overseen a number of exhibitions and initiatives, including the critically well-received Face to Face: Flanders, Florence, and Renaissance Painting, and the reinstallation and significant expansion of the American Art collections, which was accompanied by the first catalogue of The Huntington’s American art (American Made: Highlights from the Huntington Art Collections, 2014). A number of important acquisitions have been made and gifts received since Kevin’s arrival, including major works by George Bellows, Arthur Dove, Frank Lloyd Wright, Reginald Marsh, George Luks, and Tony Smith on the American side, and Henry Fuseli and Pierre-Jacques Volaire on the European side. 

Britt Salvesen joined the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2009 as curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and the Prints and Drawings Department. Previously, she was director and chief curator at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP), University of Arizona. She received her MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and her PhD from the University of Chicago. She has chaired LACMA's Curatorial Forum and has initiated several cross-departmental projects and institutional collaborations. Her exhibitions at LACMA include Catherine Opie: Figure and Landscape (2010); Ellsworth Kelly: Prints and Paintings (2012); Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa—Art and Film; John Divola: As Far as I Could Get (2013); and See the Light: Photography, Perception, Cognition—The Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection (2014). Current research is directed toward a Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective, in collaboration with the Getty Museum and Getty Research Institute (2016); and a survey of 3D photography and film, co-organized with the Art Institute of Chicago (2017).

Rochelle Steiner is a Los Angeles-based curator, writer and professor of curatorial studies at the Roski School of Art and Design, University of Southern California, where she served as dean from 2010-12. She was previously Director of the Public Art Fund, New York (2006-9), Chief Curator of the Serpentine Gallery, London (2001-6), and Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum (1996-2001). Steiner has curated major exhibitions and large-scale public art projects in the US, Europe and Asia, including 6 Under 60, an exhibition about emerging international cities for the 2011 Shenzhen and Hong Kong Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, Olafur Eliasson’s The New York City Waterfalls (2008), and monographic exhibitions with John Currin, Ellsworth Kelly, Gabriel Orozco, Elizabeth Peyton, Cindy Sherman, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, among many others. Steiner received an MA and PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester, New York. 

Matthew Welch is Deputy Director & Chief Curator at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. He received his B.A. in English and Art History from Trinity University in San Antonio (1980) and an M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1995) in Asian Art History from the University of Kansas. He spent four years in the Department of Letters at Kyoto University, initially as a Fulbright Research Fellow. In his dissertation he examined the paintings and calligraphy of the Japanese Zen priest Toju Zenchu (alias Nantenbo) and their purpose within the monastic setting and lay community. Matthew has been at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts since 1990 and was previously Assistant Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Japanese and Korean Art. He has generated eleven exhibitions, four of which have toured nationally. He has authored six books and has contributed essays to several other publications. In 1998, he expanded the display of Japanese art at the museum from two to nine galleries, and in 2006 he unveiled six additional galleries—making the Japanese art display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts one of the largest in the country. In 1998, he also opened the first gallery devoted to Korean art at the museum. Since his appointment as Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs in February, 2008, he has revamped the museum's exhibition selection process and is presently examining the role of ancillary support groups to ensure that their activities are aligned with the museum's mission and that their contributions are recognized and celebrated. 

Elizabeth Armstrong is the JoAnn McGrath Executive Director of Palm Springs Art Museum. Previously, she served as the Founding Curator of Contemporary Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA). During her tenure at the MIA, Armstrong founded the museum’s Center for Alternative Museum Practice (CAMP), a lab for innovative and experimental programming at the museum, which has spawned a diverse range of successful programs. She also established the first program of contemporary art at the encyclopedic museum and raised $4 million for new acquisitions.

Armstrong has curated numerous exhibitions, including Global Remix I: What is Sacred?; More Real: Art in the Age of Truthiness; and Until Now: Collecting the New (1960-2010) at the MIA; Mary Heilmann Retrospective; Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at the Midcentury; and American Moderns: Villa America, 1900– 1950, at the Orange County Museum of Art; and Ultrabaroque: Aspects of Post Latin American Artat the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego.

She has also edited and authored essays for dozens of publications on contemporary art, including her award winning Birth of the Cool book, Girls’ Night Out; and David Reed: Motion Pictures, and is a frequent lecturer.

Armstrong earned a Master of Arts degree in the History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. In 2008, she was one of ten curators selected nationwide to participate in the inaugural year of the Center for Curatorial Leadership in partnership with Columbia Business School in New York City. 

Colin B. Bailey is Director of The Morgan Library & Museum. Previously, he served as the Director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, overseeing the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park.

Prior to his arrival in California, Bailey served as Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator at The Frick Collection in New York. He had been Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the National Gallery of Canada, Senior Curator at the Kimbell Art Museum in Ft. Worth, and held curatorial posts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum earlier in his career.

Bailey earned a DPhil in Art History from the University of Oxford. A specialist in 18th- and 19th-century French art and responsible for many celebrated exhibitions and publications, he has been an Officier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres since 2010.

SILVIA KARMAN CUBIÑÁ is the Executive Director and Chief Curator, Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach in 2008. Previously, she was the Director of The Moore Space, Miami, from 2002-2008. In the past, she held the position of Adjunct Curator at inova, the Institute of Visual Arts; University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; and at The Mexican Museum in San Francisco and the Cuban Museum of Art in Miami. She was the Puerto Rico commissioner to the 1997 Bienal de Sao Paolo. She has curated numerous exhibitions, lectured extensively and participated in grant panels and award selection committees, including serving as a juror for the Guggenheim Museum’s Hugo Boss Award for 2006 and juror at the Bienal de Lyon in 2008. In 2007, she was a finalist for the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement and was a fellow in the Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL) fellowship program. Ms. Cubiñá currently serves on the Knight Foundation National Arts Advisory Board and on the Board of Directors of the AAMD American Alliance of Art Museum Directors. In 2012, Ms. Cubiñá was awarded the distinction of Chevalier de l'ordre des arts et lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.

Eleanor Jones Harvey is senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She earned a B.A. with distinction in art history from the University of Virginia, and earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in the history of art from Yale University. Her most recent project was the exhibition The Civil War and American Art, which was on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2012-2013 and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in the summer of 2013.  She served as SAAM’s Chief Curator from 2003-2012. Prior to coming to the Smithsonian she served as the curator of American art at the Dallas Museum of Art from 1992-2002, and began her career as Assistant Curator of American Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston from 1989-1991. 

Paola Morsiani was most recently director of Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College. 

Morsiani received her Laurea in art history and history of criticism from the University of Padua in Italy, and an MA in Arts Administration from New York University. In 2008, she participated in the Center for Curatorial Leadership fellowship and studied at Columbia University’s Executive Education Program. Early in her career, she worked in curatorial departments at the Drawing Center, New York; Queens Museum, New York; and at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  As Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, she curated a number of acclaimed exhibitions, including Andrea Zittel: Critical Space (2005, co-organized with Trevor Smith and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York), Fade In: New Film and Video (2004), When 1 is 2: The Art of Alighiero e Boetti (2002), and Subject Plural: Crowds in Contemporary Art (2001). At the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, she also curated several project-room sized exhibitions, with artists Adrian Paci (2005), Abraham Cruzvillegas (2003), Amy Adler, Liza May Post, Francesca Woodman (2001), and Dario Robleto.  A catalogue accompanied each exhibition, with essays by Ms. Morsiani and other writers.

In 2008, she became Curator of Contemporary Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where she reinstalled the contemporary art collection galleries in the new East Wing, which opened to the public in June 2009. She also made a number of significant collection acquisitions, including The Casting (2007) by Omer Fast, One and Three Photographs [Ety.] (1965) by Joseph Kosuth, Continuous Mile (2006–2008) by Liza Lou, Jackie Curtis and Ritta Redd (1970) by Alice Neel, and Rho I (1977) by Jack Whitten, among others. In addition, Morsiani curated the first US solo museum exhibition of the work of Korean artist Kim Beom, which opened in November 2010. She was involved in fundraising, grant writing, and educational outreach and marketing for local, national, and international art audiences; and conceptualized and implemented a pilot program of Contemporary Artists Lecture Series (2011: Ann Hamilton; Raqs Media Collective); and directed and expanded the Contemporary Art Society, a 120 members affiliate group, among many other duties.

The Director of the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University, Jordana Pomeroy received her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College and her Ph.D. from Columbia University. She was previously the Executive Director of the LSU Museum of Art, and affiliate faculty of the Department of Art History at LSU. As the Chief Curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., Pomeroy organized many notable exhibitions. Among these include:An Imperial Collection: Women Artists from the State Hermitage Museum(2003),Italian Women Artists from Renaissance to Baroque(2007), andNordic Cool: Hot Women Designers(2004). Her bookIntrepid Women: Victorian Artists Travel(Ashgate, 2005) was critically well received. Pomeroy has published widely on the subject of British patronage of the arts in the early 19th century and served as a Professorial Lecturer at Georgetown University in the area of museum studies. A member of the inaugural class of the Center for Curatorial Leadership, Pomeroy served as a trustee for the Association of Art Museum Curators. She is currently Louisiana’s state representative for the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries.