Mentor & Residency Hosts 2011

Stephanie D'Alessandro, Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of Modern Art The Art Institute of Chicago
MENTOR: Emily Rafferty, President, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
RESIDENCY: Sir Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate

Andria Derstine, Curator of Collections and Curator of European & American Art Allen Memorial Art Museum
MENTOR: William Griswold, Director, The Morgan Library and Museum
RESIDENCY: Timothy Rub, The George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Dan Finamore, Russell W. Knight Curator of Maritime Art and History Peabody Essex Museum
MENTOR: Tom Lentz, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums
RESIDENCY: Michael Shapiro, Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr. Director, The High Museum of Art

Toby Jurovics, Chief Curator and Holland Curator of American Western Art Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE
MENTOR: Brian Ferriso, Marilyn H. and Dr. Robert B. Pamplin, Jr. Director, Portland Art Museum
RESIDENCY: Hugh Davies, The David C. Copley Director & CEO, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

Griffith Mann, Chief Curator, Cleveland Museum of Art (* now Deputy Director and Chief Curator)
MENTOR: Kaywin Feldman, Director and President, Minneapolis Institute of Arts
RESIDENCY: James Cuno, President and Eloise W. Martin Director, Art Institute of Chicago

Roxana Marcoci, Curator, Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art
MENTOR: Richard Armstrong, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
RESIDENCY: Alfred Pacquement, Director, Centre Pompidou

Olivier Meslay, Senior Curator of European and American Art, Dallas Museum of Art (* now Acting Director)
MENTOR: Glenn Lowry, Director, The Museum of Modern Art
RESIDENCY: Julian Zugazagoitia, Director, Nelson-Atkins Museum

Jeannine O’Grody, Chief Curator, Birmingham Museum of Art (* now Deputy Director and Chief Curator)
MENTOR: Doreen Bolger, Director, Baltimore Museum of Art
RESIDENCY: Max Anderson, Director, Indianapolis Museum of Art

Michael Taylor, Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art Philadelphia Museum of Art (* now Director, The Hood Museum at Dartmouth College)
MENTOR: Jock Reynolds, Henry J. Heinz II Director, Yale University Art Gallery
RESIDENCY: Josef Helfenstein, Director, The Menil Collection

Beth Venn, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art and Senior Curator, American Art, Newark Museum
MENTOR: Ned Rifkin, Director, Blanton Museum of Art
RESIDENCY: Adam Lerner, Director, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver

2011 Fellows

Stephanie D'Alessandro
Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of Modern Art
The Art Institute of Chicago

Stephanie D’Alessandro is the Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of Modern Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Chicago, specializing in art of the Weimar Republik. She began her career at the Art Institute in 1998 as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow and has also organized several exhibitions for Chicago, including Poetics of Scale (2003) and Juan Muñoz (2002). Most recently, she oversaw the installation of the collection in the Art Institute’s new Modern Wing (2009) and co-curated the major exhibition, Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-17 (2010). Prior to joining the Art Institute, D’Alessandro was Associate Curator at the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago.

D’Alessandro is currently at work on a number of projects, including a comprehensive scholarly catalogue of the modern European collection and an exhibition on the subject of Surrealist games.



Andria Derstine
Curator of Collections and Curator of European & American Art
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH

Andria Derstine is Curator of Collections and Curator of European & American Art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College. Prior to joining the Allen in 2006, she was an Assistant Curator and Mellon Fellow at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Andria co-curated the exhibitions Side by Side: Oberlin’s Masterworks at the Met and Side by Side: Oberlin’s Masterworks at The Phillips, as well as the installation of 17th- to 19th-century art from Oberlin at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Among her past projects are exhibitions of Renaissance through contemporary drawings, post-war American art, Warhol, and the work of photographer Chris Jordan. She is currently overseeing the reinstallation of the Allen following an extensive building renovation, planning an exhibition of Renaissance art from the Oberlin and Yale collections, and has co-authored the first general handbook to the Allen’s collection (forthcoming). Her scholarly expertise is in 17th-18th century French and Italian art, and among her numerous publications in those fields is the collection catalogue Masters of Italian Baroque Painting: The Detroit Institute of Arts. Andria has taught at NYU and Oberlin; she holds a Ph.D. from NYU, with a dissertation on the French Academy in Rome and the Accademia di San Luca, and an A.B. from Harvard.



Dan Finamore
Russell W. Knight Curator of Maritime Art and History
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA

Daniel Finamore is the Russell W. Knight Curator of Maritime Art and History at the Peabody Essex Museum, where he has organized more than fifteen exhibitions. Finamore holds an undergraduate degree from Vassar College where he studied anthropology and art history. He holds an MA and PhD from Boston University in the field of archaeology. In 1996, he received an award from the Society for American Archaeology for an outstanding dissertation. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Science Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts for his research and exhibition projects. He has written over 40 articles and chapters for academic and popular publications, and is the author and/or editor of five books, most recently Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea (2010). He resides with his wife and two children in Salem, Massachusetts.



Toby Jurovics
Chief Curator and Holland Curator of American Western Art
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE

Toby Jurovics was recently appointed the Chief Curator and Holland Curator of American Western Artat the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. Prior to joining the Joslyn, Mr. Jurovics was a curator of photography at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Princeton University Art Museum. This past spring, he organized the first major retrospective on Timothy H. O’Sullivan in three decades, Framing the West: The Survey Photographs of Timothy H. O’Sullivan. and has organized numerous exhibitions by contemporary artists, including Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Barbara Bosworth, John Gossage, Emmet Gowin, and Edward Ranney. He has lectured widely on American landscape photography, and is the author of essays on Thomas Joshua Cooper, John Gossage, Emmet Gowin and the New Topographics. A dedicated champion of mid-career and emerging artists, he has endeavored to create exhibitions and programs that reach both popular and academic audiences while engaging vital contemporary issues. Mr. Jurovics holds a B.A. in art history and English from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and an M.A. in art history from the University of Delaware.



Griffith Mann
Chief Curator
Cleveland Museum of Art

Formerly the director of the curatorial division at the Walters Art Museum, C. Griffith Mann joined the Cleveland Museum of Art as chief curator in September, 2008. In Cleveland, Mann has helped to develop the museum’s renowned permanent collection and to shape its special exhibition program. As part of the museum’s building campaign, Mann helped to lead the reinstallation of CMA’s permanent collection in the new East Wing and renovated 1916 Building. He also co-curated Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe, co-organized by CMA, the Walters Art Museum, and the British Museum, London. A graduate of Williams College, Mann received his MA and PhD from the Johns Hopkins University, where he specialized in medieval Italian art. During his career, he has curated exhibitions on medieval manuscript illumination and the art and archaeology of medieval Russia, and written about painting, devotion, and civic identity in 14th-century Italy.



Roxana Marcoci
Curator, Department of Photography
The Museum of Modern Art

Roxana Marcoci holds a PhD in Art History, Theory and Criticism from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. At MoMA her exhibitions accompanied by publications include The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today (2010); the retrospective Take your time: Olafur Eliasson (co-curated, MoMA and PS1, 2008); Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making (2007); the retrospective Thomas Demand (2005); Counter-Monuments and Memory (2000). Other MoMA projects include shows devoted to the work of Roe Ethridge, Elad Lassry, Alex Prager, Amanda Ross-Ho, Jan De Cock, Josephine Meckseper, Mikhael Subotzky, Jonathan Monk, Barbara Probst, Jules Spinatsch, Mark Dion, and Lee Mingwei. Marcoci also curated the exhibition Here Tomorrow (Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, 2002), which was accompanied by a major publication. Her recent essay “From Face to Mask: Collage, Montage, and Assemblage in Contemporary Portraiture,” appeared in the anthology Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art. In conjunction with this publication, she co-curated the exhibition Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography (2010). Marcoci is at work on Projects 86: Haris Epaminonda; and the survey exhibition Sanja Iveković: Sweet Violence (both 2011).



Olivier Meslay
Senior Curator of European and American Art
Dallas Museum of Art

Olivier Meslay has served as Senior curator for European and American Art and Barbara Thomas Lemmon Curator of European Art since joining the Dallas Museum of Art in September, 2009. Prior to Dallas, he was a Chief Curator at the Musée du Louvre, in charge of developing the new Louvre Lens in northern France. In his 16 years at the Louvre, Meslay was in charge of British, Spanish and American Art in the Department of Paintings. He was also professor at the École du Louvre 1997-1999 and 2003-2006.

Meslay entered the Institut National du Patrimoine in 1992 and joined the Louvre in 1993. In Paris, Meslay curated numerous exhibitions on British Art: D’outre Manche, British Art in French Public Collections, 1994. He co-curated the exhibition, Constable, selected by Lucian Freud, 2002, British art in the collections of the Academie Française museums 2004, and more recently American Artists and the Louvre, 2006, and William Hogarth at the Louvre, 2006-2007. He directed and launched two web sites on English and American art in French public collections (D’outre-Manche and Lafayette). He also curated smaller exhibitions and catalogues in French provincial and Parisian museums (Dijon, Rouen, Fondation Custodia in Paris)

In 2000-2001, he received a fellowship from the Clark Art Institute for a year. He has been part of the council at the Attingham Trust, the scientific committee of the British Art Journal. From 2002 until 2009 Meslay was the Vice-president and member of the executive board of the Vieilles Maisons Françaises the main heritage organization in France.



Jeannine O'Grody
Chief Curator
Birmingham Museum of Art

Jeannine A. O’Grody is the Chief Curator and Curator of European Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art, where she manages the departments of Curatorial, Registration, Preparation, Library, Photography, and Exhibition Design. She specializes in Italian Renaissance art; her research interests include old master prints and drawings, fifteenth through eighteenth-century European sculpture, patronage, and the creative process. She received her M.A. from Syracuse University, Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University, and wrote her dissertation on Michelangelo’s sculptural models. She has published and lectured on artists such as Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Bernini.
In Birmingham, O’Grody has curated numerous exhibitions, including Leonardo da Vinci: Drawings from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin (2008), featuring eleven rare drawings and the Codex on the Flight of Birds. She has also reinstalled the Italian, Dutch, English, and 19th-century European collections. Previously, O’Grody worked at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and was a National Endowment for the Arts Curatorial Fellow at Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum.



Michael Taylor
Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Michael R. Taylor is the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His most recent exhibitions at the Museum include “Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris” (2010); “Marcel Duchamp: Etant donnés” (2009); “Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective” (2009); “Salvador Dalí: The Centennial Retrospective” (2005); and “Giorgio de Chirico and the Myth of Ariadne” (2002). Dr. Taylor studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where he wrote a doctoral dissertation on Marcel Duchamp’s readymades. He has published widely on Duchamp, Dada, and Surrealism. In 2009 he was co-commissioner with Carlos Basualdo for the Bruce Nauman exhibition at the American Pavilion for the 53rd Venice Biennale (winner of the Golden Lion award for best national pavilion). In 2009 Dr. Taylor’s book Marcel Duchamp: Etant donnés won the George Wittenborn Prize and was also awarded first prize for best museum permanent collection catalogue by the American Association of Art Museum Curators.



Beth Venn
Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art and Senior Curator, American Art
Newark Museum

Beth Venn is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and Senior Curator of the department of American Art at The Newark Museum. Previously, she was a curator for the private collection of Eileen and Peter Norton, a contemporary art collection known as one of the finest in the country. She spent seven years at the Whitney Museum of American Art, first as Associate Curator of the Permanent Collection and later as director of the Whitney’s branch museums. Before her time at the Whitney, she worked as an NEA Curatorial Fellow in the department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Philadelphia Museum, and as a Research Associate in the Department of American Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.