Kirk Varnedoe, who organized Jasper Johns: A Retrospective, has been
Chief Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art,
since 1988, after having served as Adjunct Curator for the previous three
years. Mr. Varnedoe first became affiliated with the Museum in 1984, when he
collaborated with William Rubin, then Director (now Director Emeritus) of the
Department of Painting and Sculpture, in organizing "Primitivism" in
20th-Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and Modern.
During his tenure at MoMA, Mr. Varnedoe has organized From Bauhaus to Pop:
Masterworks Given by Philip Johnson (with Robert Storr, 1996), Masterpieces
from the Louise Reinhardt Smith Collection (1995), Cy Twombly: A Retrospective
(1994–95), Masterpieces from the David and Peggy Rockefeller Collection: Manet
to Picasso (1994), High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture (with Adam
Gopnik, 1990), and Vienna 1900: Art, Architecture, & Design (1986), all of
which were accompanied by catalogues he authored. In 1989 he initiated the
series Artist's Choice, in which artists select and install temporary
exhibitions of works from the Museum's collection. The inaugural exhibition,
Scott Burton: Burton on Brancusi, was followed by Ellsworth Kelly:
Fragmentation and the Single Form (1990); Chuck Close: Head-on/The Modern
Portrait (1991); John Baldessari: E.G. Grass, Water Heater, Mouths, & etc.
(for John Graham), (1994); and Elizabeth Murray: Modern Women (1995).
In 1993 Mr. Varnedoe oversaw the expansion and renovation of the Museum's
Painting and Sculpture galleries, placing a special emphasis on contemporary
work and presenting a major rethinking of the collection and its display. Mr.
Varnedoe's installation ranges from Abstract Expressionism to Pop to Minimalism
to large-scale European and American art that underscores the expanded space.
Among previous exhibitions Mr. Varnedoe organized for other institutions
are Northern Light: Realism and Symbolism in Scandinavian Painting, 1880–1910
(1982–83), Gustave Caillebotte: A Retrospective Exhibition (1976–77), Modern
Portraits: The Self and Others (1976), and Rodin Drawings True and False (with
Albert Elsen, 1971–72).
From 1980 to 1988 Mr. Varnedoe taught at The Institute of Fine Arts, New
York University, first as Associate Professor (until 1984) and then as
Professor of Fine Arts. He continues to hold an adjunct teaching post there. In
1992 Mr. Varnedoe held the Slade Professorship in Art History at Oxford
University, a visiting professorship that included a series of public lectures.
In 1984 he received the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, which resulted in his
book A Fine Disregard: What Makes Modern Art Modern (Abrams, 1990). He
has also written Gustave Caillebotte (1987) and Northern Light:
Nordic Painting at the Turn of the Century (1988), both published by Yale
University Press. He has lectured on a wide variety of topics across the
country and his articles have appeared in various art journals.
Born in Savannah, Georgia, Mr. Varnedoe graduated from Williams College and
received his M.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1972) degrees in art history from Stanford
University. In 1994 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts by
Williams College.
For further information contact Alexandra Partow, Assistant Director of
Communications, 212/708–9756.
