The Gagosian Gallery has announced that John Elderfield, well known curator and art historian, and Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, will join the gallery in April as a consultant to organize selected special exhibitions and projects with artists.
Mr. Elderfield stated, “I am delighted to be working with Larry Gagosian on exhibition projects. The gallery has more than fully demonstrated its ability to present extremely important, museum-quality exhibitions, and I will soon begin feasibility studies for projects that we look forward to realizing.”
Mr. Gagosian added, “I am thrilled we will be working with John Elderfield on many exciting projects with our artists and take great pleasure in welcoming him to the gallery. His depth of experience and knowledge is highly respected in the art world and will broaden and enhance both our historical and contemporary programs.”
John Elderfield Biography
John Elderfield is an independent curator and art historian and Chief Curator Emeritus of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, where he recently directed the acclaimed exhibition, “De Kooning: A Retrospective.” He previously curated more than twenty exhibitions at MoMA, ranging from “Fauvism and its Affinities”(1976) and “Kurt Schwitters”(1985) to the celebrated “Henri Matisse: A Retrospective”(1992); and co-curated “Piet Mondrian”(1994), “Bonnard”(1998), and “Matisse-Picasso”(2002-03). His more recent projects included “Manet and the Execution of Maximilian”(2006), “Armando Reverón”(2007), “Martin Puryear”(2007) and “Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-17” (2010).
Born in Yorkshire, England, Mr. Elderfield earned B.A. and M.Phil. degrees from the University of Leeds and a Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London University, and has been awarded a Harkness Fellowship, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and the first Mitchell Prize for a book on twentieth-century art. In addition to his exhibition catalogues, he has published books on Hugo Ball (1974/1996), Helen Frankenthaler (1988), and Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1997), among others; some seventy-five articles on subjects ranging from eighteenth-century drawing to the work of Bob Dylan; and he lectures widely.
Among his recent affiliations and awards, Mr, Elderfield has been a Visiting Fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles (2001); an Associate Fellow at the American Academy in Rome (2006); named by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People of the Year (2005); made Officier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government (2006); and awarded an honorary D. Litt. from the University of Leeds (2008). Mr. Elderfield is also Senior Adviser to Art.sy, the search engine for art. He has joint British and United States citizenship, and lives in New York City with his wife, Jeanne Collins, president of a communications firm specializing in arts organizations.