2009 AAMC Awards for Excellence Announced

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ASSOCIATION OF ART MUSEUM CURATORS ANNOUNCES

THE RECIPIENTS OF THE ANNUAL AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE IN 2009

For Release May 17, 2010, Chicago, Illinois

The Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) announces its annual Awards for Excellence in the categories of museum catalogues, articles, and exhibitions. Members of the AAMC are eligible for nomination, and awards are determined by the organization’s membership.

"We had nearly one-hundred nominations for prizes this year, all of which were distinguished by their quality, variety, and standard of excellence” remarks Sally Block, Executive Director of the AAMC. "It speaks to a creativity and spirit of innovation that is exceptionally encouraging, particularly at this moment when we are all being asked to do more with less. Across the board, the catalogues, essays, and exhibitions showed a consistent engagement with current scholarship- often breaking new ground- and yet, were also thoughtfully designed or installed”.

In the field of permanent collection catalogues, the AAMC has awarded Michael R. Taylor’s Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés its highest honor. "Permanent collection catalogues take a variety of forms, from comprehensive analysis of an entire department’s collection to surveys of the best quality works within an art museum’s collection, says Andrew J. Walker, Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs at the Saint Louis Art Museum and AAMC Permanent Collection Jury Chair. "What distinguished this year’s winner, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s magisterial Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés, is the rare opportunity to explore with scholarly and technical rigor, a single work of art. The book, edited with precision by Michael R. Taylor, the Museum’s Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art, demonstrates that understanding the genesis, construction, installation and legacy of Duchamp's construction can only be accomplished through the breadth of the PMA’s extensive collection.”

Bauhaus 1919 - 1933: Workshops for Modernity, published by the Museum of Modern Art, took the top award for both Outstanding Exhibition Catalogue and Outstanding Exhibition in the Eastern Time Zone, the latter honor it shares with the exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice.

"Bauhaus is simply an indispensable book for anyone interested in 20th century art, design, architecture, and pedagogy”, says Constance Lewallen, Adjunct Curator at the Berkeley Art Museum and AAMC Exhibition Catalogue Jury Chair. "It amply documents the long-overdue, comprehensive exhibition at MoMA—amazingly, the first at the Museum since 1938 (and that one omitted the last several years of the school's existence). The curators, Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman deserve high praise for their important contribution to our understanding of the art, the teachers, and the students of this unique institution.”

All awards for 2009 will be formally announced at the AAMC Ninth Annual Meeting, to be held May 17, 2010 at the Art Institute of Chicago. The following are the winners of the 2009 Annual AAMC Awards (AAMC member’s names are listed in italics):

Outstanding Catalogue Based on a Permanent Collection

Michael R. Taylor with essays by Andrew Lins, Melissa S. Meighan, Beth A. Price, Ken Sutherland, Scott Homolka, and Elena Torok; foreword by Alice Beamesderfer and Gail Harrity

Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés, Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2009.

Honorable Mentions

William C. Siegmann with an essay by Joseph Adande and contributions by Kevin D. Dumouchelle

African Art: A Century at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum; DelMonico Books – Prestel Publishing, 2009.

Dennis P. Weller

Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings, Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 2009.

Outstanding Exhibition Catalogue

Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman with foreword by Glenn D. Lowry

Bauhaus 1919 - 1933: Workshops for Modernity, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2009.

Runners-up

Deborah L. Krohn and Peter N. Miller with Marybeth De Filippis, and contributions by Natalie Zemon Davis, Marybeth De Filippis, Joyce D. Goodfriend, Jaap Jacobs, Els Kloek, Deborah L. Krohn, Peter N. Miller, Ruth Piwonka, David William Voorhees and Kees Zandvliet
Dutch New York Between East and West: The World of Margrieta van Varick, New York: Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture; New York: The New-York Historical Society; and Yale University Press/ New Haven and London, 2009.

Susan Greenberg Fisher with Mary Ann Caws, Jennifer R. Gross, Patricia Leighten, Irene Small, and S. Zelda Roland and Katherine M. Wyman

Picasso and the Allure of Language, New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery in association with Yale University Press and with the support of Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, 2009.

Honorable Mentions

Anne Collins Goodyear and James W. McManus with additional essays by Janine A. Mileaf, Francis M. Naumann and Michael R. Taylor

Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture, Washington, D.C.: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Cambridge, London: The MIT Press, 2009.

Alan Chong and Noriko Murai with Christine M. E. Guth, Louise Allison Cort, Greg M. Thomas, Stanley Abe, Haejeong Hazel Hahn, & Pedro Moura Carvalho
Journeys East: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Asia, Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in association with Gutenberg Periscope, 2009.

Alexandra Munroe with contributions by D. Scott Atkinson, Vivien Greene, Harry Harootunian, Richard King, Alexandra Munroe, Ikuyo Nakagawa, David W. Patterson, Kathleen Pyne, Thomas J. Rimer, Kristine Stiles, and Bert Winther-Tamaki

The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989, New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2009.

Outstanding Article, Essay or Extended Catalogue Entry

Nancy Mowll Mathews

"Prendergast in Italy" in Prendergast in Italy, Merrell Publishers, Ltd, in association with Williams College Museum of Art and Terra Foundation for American Art, 2009.

Runner-up

Emily J. Peters

"Systems and Swells: The Collective Lineage of Engraved Lines, 1480-1650," in The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver, 1480-1650. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 2009.

Outstanding Exhibition or Installation

Eastern Time Zone (Tie)

"Bauhaus 1919 - 1933: Workshops for Modernity,” curated by Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman. Organized by The Museum of Modern Art, in cooperation with Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, and Klassik Stiftung Weimar.

"Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice” curated by Frederick Ilchman. Co-organized by The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Louvre Museum, Paris.

Central Time Zone

"Becoming Edvard Munch: Influence, Anxiety, and Myth” curated by Jay A. Clarke. Organized by The Art Institute of Chicago.

Pacific Time Zone

"Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures” curated by Stephanie Barron and co-curator Dr. Eckhart Gillen. Organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Mission of the AAMC

The mission of the Association of Art Museum Curators is to support and promote the work of museum curators by creating opportunities for networking, collaboration, professional development, and advancement. With a membership of over 900, the goals of the AAMC are to:

· Serve as an advocacy group for the curatorial profession

· Articulate professional standards and best practices

· Promote best practices and professional relationships through Annual Meetings and educational programs on selected themes held at venues throughout North America

· Promote research, scholarship, and networking opportunities through travel grants

· Use the website to exchange scholarly and procedural information as well as traveling exhibition and employment opportunities

· Recognize distinguished achievement in the field through annual awards

· Provide an open forum for discussion about museum issues in North America

· Accomplish these goals in cooperation with museum directors, trustees, and other staff as well as other national cultural and arts advocacy organizations

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Contact: Sally Block, AAMC Director, 212-879-5701

sally.block@artcurators.org