Amy Smith-Stewart Named Chief Curator of Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Amy Smith-Stewart has been named as the brand new chief curator of the Aldrich Modern Artwork Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, turning into the primary girl to helm the non-collecting establishment since its founding in 1964. Smith-Stewart, a curator on the Aldrich since 2013, has a longtime observe document of presenting the work of rising and underrecognized artists. She replaces Richard Klein, who introduced his departure in January after main the museum for greater than three many years.
“For nearly ten years Amy Smith-Stewart has been a central voice within the Aldrich’s exhibition programming, partnering with artists on exhibits which have captured the eye of our viewers and critics alike,” mentioned Aldrich director Cybele Maylone. “Serving because the museum’s chief curator is the pure subsequent step in her management, and I’m excited to work together with her on this new position.”
Smith-Stewart started her profession at P.S.1 Modern Artwork Middle (now MoMA PS1) in Queens, New York, the place she gave artists together with Aleksandra Mir, Adrian Paci, Mika Rottenberg, and Taryn Simon their first solo museum exhibits. After a short stint as curatorial advisor at New York’s Mary Boone Gallery, the place she mounted quite a lot of group exhibits that includes contemporary expertise, she launched her personal nomadic curatorial initiative on town’s Decrease East Aspect. This undertaking, which ran from 2007 to 2009, was partly concurrent together with her 2006–08 work as visitor curator for the Peter Norton assortment. Smith-Stewart moreover curated exhibits on the Socrates Sculpture Park and the Noguchi Museum, each in Queens, and has served on the school of the MA packages on the College of the Visible Arts and the Sotheby’s Institute of Artwork, each in New York.
Since arriving on the Aldrich in 2013, she has curated forty-two exhibitions, together with debut solo museum exhibits by Genesis Belanger, Milano Chow, Lucia Hierro, Eva LeWitt, and Jessi Reaves, and surveys of artists together with Concord Hammond, Karla Knight, Suzanne McClelland, Ruth Root, and Jackie Winsor. Smith-Stewart’s most up-to-date exhibition, 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone, tracks the evolution of feminist artwork practices over half a century. On view via January 8, 2023, the present revisits the Aldrich’s landmark 1971 Lucy Lippard–curated exhibition Twenty Six Modern Girls Artists, presenting the work of the unique exhibiting artists alongside that of twenty-six female-identifying and nonbinary rising artists.
Smith-Stewart already has plans for brand spanking new initiatives on the museum. “It’s a super honor to be the primary girl to steer the Aldrich’s exhibitions division. The Aldrich has an extended historical past of supporting visionary artists at important factors of their careers,” she mentioned. “Subsequent yr, we are going to start a brand new artist honoraria initiative and embark on a undertaking to enhance and replace our campus to extend alternatives for artists and guarantee higher entry for all communities. The artist is all the time on the middle at The Aldrich. Collectively, with a artistic and collaborative staff, we are going to work to uncover and amplify new and underrecognized voices within the area.”
