Brandeis Magazine

The Rose Art Museum has hired a former assistant curator at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) as its next curator.

Kim Conaty, the Sue and Eugene Mercy Jr Assistant Curator of Drawings and Prints at MoMA, joins the Rose during a “historic period of ambitious growth,” says Christopher Bedford, the museum’s Henry and Lois Foster Director.

Conaty, who begins her new position in December, will play a key role in planning exhibitions and interpreting the Rose’s collection of postwar art. She will also undertake research and evaluate potential acquisitions. “Working as a team,” Bedford says, “we will create innovative exhibitions and programs that support and expand the museum’s roles as an educational resource for the university, a center for community engagement and a cultural hub for Boston.”

“I am thrilled to join one of the leading university art museums in the country,” says Conaty, who has lectured, taught and written about such artists as Wade Guyton, Jonathan Meese and Gerhard Richter.

“My own scholarship and interests strongly relate to the Rose’s collection and curatorial program,” she says, “and I look forward to working with the Rose staff to continue building upon the museum’s outstanding reputation through groundbreaking exhibitions, key acquisitions and collaborations within the university.”

At MoMA, Conaty organized the 2013 exhibition “Abstract Generation: Now in Print,” and collaborated on several exhibitions of postwar and contemporary art, including the forthcoming “Marcel Broodthaers,” “Print/Out” (2012), “Contemporary Art From the Collection” (2010), “Fluxus Preview” (2009), and “In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, 1960-1976” (2009).

In addition to pursuing new acquisitions of contemporary art — including works by Janice Kerbel and Daniel Joseph Martinez, and a major performance archive by William Pope.L — Conaty led a project team dedicated to MoMA’s Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection, comprising some 8,000 works across multiple mediums. She was also an active member of the cross-departmental global research initiative known as C-MAP (Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives).

Conaty earned a BA from Middlebury College and a master’s from Williams College, and is completing a PhD at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.