News — Jun 3, 2009

The Board of Trustees of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam today announces that Ann Goldstein (b. 1957, Los Angeles) will take up the post of General Artistic Director of the Stedelijk Museum in January 2010. Goldstein is currently Senior Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, California, USA. Goldstein succeeds Gijs van Tuyl, who has led the museum since 2005. 

The members of the Board of Trustees voted unanimously to appoint Goldstein as Director. 

The museum’s workers’ council and Carolien Gehrels, the city’s Alderman with responsibility 

for Art and Culture, have also responded enthusiastically to the nomination.

The appointment of Ann Goldstein underscores the Stedelijk’s reputation as an experimental, up-to-date, and socially committed museum, devoted to modern and contemporary art and artists. Goldstein places great emphasis on close cooperation with artists and the art world. She sees the Stedelijk as a prominent, defining institution with the ability to occupy a leading position through compelling exhibitions, sound art-historical research, distinguished acquisitions, dynamic education programs, and scholarly publications, all grounded in its extraordinary, world-class collection. 

Ann Goldstein’s ambition is to make modern and contemporary art and design meaningful to the general public and expert alike by cultivating relationships through the museum. Goldstein feels that the museum should be “a lively and dynamic place, where programs are highly anticipated and curiosity is piqued, where artists feel at home and the public is constantly offered new and unexpected experiences.” 

Ann Goldstein has worked for over 25 years at MOCA and, in 2001, was appointed Senior Curator. She has played an important role in the development of the museum, founded in 1979, into an internationally acclaimed institution. Goldstein is widely renowned as a curator and scholar, based on numerous exhibitions of modern and contemporary art that she has organized and overseen at the museum, and her extensive work with the permanent collection. Many of her exhibitions have toured to leading institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art (both in New York), while various publications she has edited and authored are regarded as defining works in the field. Her knowledge of 20th and 21st-century art will be extremely relevant to her new position at the Stedelijk, as will her progressive, informed, and exciting ideas about the role of museums today. Goldstein possesses an extensive international network of artists, curators, historians, and collectors. Though based in America, she has also maintained a special focus on European artists and institutions. In addition to her curatorial accomplishments, Goldstein’s tenure at MOCA has been characterized by strong leadership and successful fundraising. As a senior staff member at MOCA, Goldstein has extensive experience and a solid foundation in museum management.  

Chairman of the Board of Trustees Alexander Ribbink says, “Ann Goldstein is exactly in line with the traditions of the museum, where contemporary art and artists have always enjoyed pride of place. We are sure she will make a major contribution to the museum. The practical and theoretical expertise she brings to the job as well as her experience in the art world and strong views on the future development of the Stedelijk made her the dream candidate.” 

Ann Goldstein says, ”I am deeply honoured, and also truly thrilled, to have the opportunity to lead the Stedelijk Museum at this most exciting and critical time in its history. The Stedelijk Museum is an extraordinary institution with an esteemed and influential history. With its highly anticipated reopening in 2010, it will again be situated at the centre of the arts community in Amsterdam and The Netherlands and take its place as one of the preeminent institutions devoted to modern and contemporary art and design in the world.”

Ann Goldstein succeeds Gijs van Tuyl (1941), who has headed the Stedelijk Museum since 2004. Under Van Tuyl, the Stedelijk ran an experimental programme at its temporary exhibition venue Stedelijk Museum CS, with highlights including the successful Andy Warhol show. His period as director saw the start of construction work on the new Stedelijk Museum. Van Tuyl also initiated the acquisition of a number of major works by artists including Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger and Rineke Dijkstra.

Directors of the Stedelijk Museum since its foundation in 1895: Jan Eduard van Someren Brand (1895-1904, curator), Cornelis Baard (1905-1936, curator, director from 1920 onward), David Röell (1936-1945), Willem Sandberg (1945-1963), Edy de Wilde (1963-1985), Wim Beeren (1985-1993), Rudi Fuchs (1993-2003), Hans van Beers (2003-2005, a.i.), Gijs van Tuyl (2005-2009) and Ann Goldstein (2010-).

 

  • Annex 1: Exhibition and scholarly activities
  • Annex 2: portrait of Ann Goldstein (to be downloaded from the site) 

Note to editors:

Alexander Ribbink, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Stedelijk Museum, is available for comment. 

Contact via: Press Office Stedelijk Museum, Marie-José Raven, +31 (0)20 – 573 26 56, m.raven@stedelijk.nl, pressoffice@stedelijk.nl. 

This press release and a portrait of Ann Goldstein in high res is available at the press section of www.stedelijk.nl/pers. The photo can only be published with the following credit line: Ann Goldstein. Photo: Michael Powers.

Ann Goldstein will come to Amsterdam as soon as possible to be introduced to museum staff, major colleagues and the press.

 Annex 1 

Ann Goldstein was born in Los Angeles in 1957 and received her BFA in Studio Art from the University of California, Los Angeles. Ms. Goldstein has organized numerous exhibitions and programs since joining MOCA in 1983. Recognized for her expertise in the fields of Minimal and Conceptual art of the 1960s and 70s, as well as current practices, her past projects include the large-scale, historical survey exhibitions A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968 (2004), which examined the emergence and foundations of Minimal art in the United States, and 1965-1975: Reconsidering the Object of Art (1995, co-curated with Anne Rorimer), the first historical survey of American and European Conceptual art organized in the United States. Her acclaimed 1989 exhibition A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation (co-curated with Mary Jane Jacob) examined issues of representation in the work of thirty American artists who emerged in the 1970s and 80s. She has worked extensively with the museum’s permanent collection, including overseeing numerous acquisitions and organizing several exhibitions drawn from MOCA’s holdings.  

Recently, Ms. Goldstein organized Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective (2008) and, with co-curator (with Donna De Salvo), Lawrence Weiner: AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE, which was co-organized by MOCA and the Whitney Museum (2007). She has also organized solo exhibitions of work by Cosima von Bonin (2007), Jennifer Bornstein (2005), Barbara Kruger (1999), Jorge Pardo (1998), Christopher Wool (1998), Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1994), Cady Noland (1992), Judy Fiskin (1992), and Roni Horn (1990). She is currently organizing the first solo museum exhibition and retrospective of the work of veteran Los Angeles-based artist William Leavitt, which will open at MOCA in November 2010. 

Ms. Goldstein has contributed scholarly texts and essays to the MOCA catalogues published in conjunction with her exhibitions and is a frequent guest author for publications produced by other institutions, including catalogues on work of John Baldessari, Hanne Darboven, Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij, Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy (collaborative works), Louise Lawler, Dieter Roth, Allen Ruppersberg, Thomas Struth, and Christopher Wool.