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Apr. 5--Seattle Art Museum has plucked its latest contemporary-art curator from one of the country's top venues, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. SAM officials announced that Michael Darling, currently an associate curator at MOCA, will take over the high-profile position.
The job was vacated last year by Lisa Corrin, who resigned after only four years. Darling, 38, will begin in July.
As the Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, he will be responsible for selecting exhibitions; researching, documenting and publishing the collection; and encouraging local patronage.
In Los Angeles, Darling curated or assisted with several substantial exhibitions, including "Roy McMakin: A Door Meant as Adornment" (which traveled to the Henry Art Gallery); "Masters of American Comics," and the current exhibition "Painting in Tongues." He studied art history at Stanford University and earned a master's degree and a doctorate from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Such an important staff change comes at a trying time for SAM, with its main downtown venue now closed for expansion. SAM also lost its Chinese-art curator last year and recently hired Josh Yiu.
The institution is stretched thin as the staff gears up to open the new Olympic Sculpture Park this fall and to reopen its expanded downtown facility, designed by Portland architect Brad Cloepfil, in 2007. SAM is still $15 million short of its fundraising goal of $180 million for those two projects.
Darling will not assume Corrin's role as head of the curatorial department. The job of chief curator was reassigned last year to SAM's longtime curator of European painting and sculpture, Chiyo Ishikawa.
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