Catherine de Zegher to be AGO’s New Director of Exhibitions and Publications
Posted by Sarah Todd on March 20th, 2008
AGO Announces New Director of Exhibitions and Publications
Catherine de Zegher, former executive director of The Drawing Center in New York, has joined the Art Gallery of Ontario as director of exhibitions and publications, overseeing the Gallery’s ambitious development of these key programs.
“We are thrilled to welcome Catherine to the Gallery at such an exciting time in our history,” says Matthew Teitelbaum, the AGO’s director and CEO. “We are constantly looking to create challenging and inventive programming with a broad national and international reach. With her knowledge of art, art institutions and audience interaction, Catherine is ideally suited to lead this process.”
Catherine de Zegher has been involved with the installation of the Gallery’s European collection and will continue to work with AGO curators to create a vibrant exhibitions program. “The Gallery is at a unique point in its history and I am very excited by the opportunity to be a part of this transforming institution,” says de Zegher. “I hope to ensure that the new AGO uses its incredible collection and establishes an inspired exhibition program to reflect a diversity of artists and ideas.”
Her passion for connecting historical and contemporary themes was a hallmark of de Zegher’s work at The Drawing Center, the only nonprofit institution in the United States to focus on the exhibition of drawings by established and emerging artists. During her seven-year tenure there, she launched a new publication program, strengthened the institution’s services to emerging artists, and invigorated the Center’s commitment to scholarship and education programs. Under her leadership, it became a magnet for dialogue and debate on art and culture.
De Zegher was the co-founder and director of the Kanaal Art Foundation in Kortrijk, Belgium. She curated many acclaimed exhibitions, such as America: Bride of the Sun. 500 Years of Latin America and the Low Countries (1992) at the Royal Museum of Fine Art, Antwerp, and Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of Twentieth-Century Art in, of, and from the Feminine (1994–1996) at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Her most recent curatorial and editorial work includes Eva Hesse Drawing (2006); 3 x Abstraction: New Methods of Drawing by Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz, and Agnes Martin (2005); Richard Tuttle: It’s a Room for 3 People (2005); The Stage of Drawing: Gesture and Act. Selected from the Tate Collection (2003); and Anna Maria Maiolino: A Life Line/Vida Afora (2002).
Catherine de Zegher has received four best show awards from the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC). She is the author and editor of numerous books; her most recent publication is Women Artists at the Millennium, co-edited with Carol Armstrong and published by MIT Press. Recipient of the Arts Writers Grant of Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation, she is currently writing a book on contemporary drawing.
