February 23, 2012
February 24, 2012
Dr. James Crump is the Museum's Chief Curator and has served as the Curator and Department Head of Photography since August 2008. Crump is an accomplished curator and writer, and is known for his work with contemporary artists and photographers. In his new role, Dr. Crump will manage and build the Art Museum’s collection of photography, foster new and interdisciplinary approaches to presenting and interpreting the collection, and collaborate with other museums and institutions to develop a program of special exhibitions. Throughout his career Dr. Crump has collaborated with several museums and galleries, including the International Center of Photography and The Drawing Center in New York. He has also worked with a variety of artists, including Ross Bleckner, Lynn Davis, Adam Fuss, and the estates of Willem De Kooning, Garry Winogrand, and Walker Evans. Crump’s work has been widely published, most recently in Archives of American Art Journal for the Smithsonian Museum, Art Review, Art in America, Print, and History of Photography. Dr. Crump has published, edited, and contributed to nearly 100 titles, including Albert Watson (2007), F. Holland Day: Suffering the Ideal (1995), Vik Muniz: Seeing is Believing (1998), and Garry Winogrand: 1964 (2002). Prior to completing his Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico, Dr. Crump was associate curator of photography at the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University, where he oversaw a collection of over 50,000 photographic prints and organized the acclaimed exhibition George Platt Lynes: Photographs from the Kinsey Institute. Dr. Crump received his bachelor’s and master’s from Indiana University. Most recently, Dr. Crump released the documentary film, Black White + Gray, featuring the influential and legendary 1970s and 1980s photography collector Sam Wagstaff. The film premiered at the 2007 New York-based Tribeca Film Festival and Europe’s Art Basel; it began airing on the Sundance Channel in March 2008. In September 2009, Skira Rizzoli released Dr. Crump's Variety: Photographs by Nan Goldin, which Photo District News deemed one of the notable photography books of the year. In 2010, Hatje Cantz will release Dr. Crump's latest effort, Walker Evans: Decade by Decade.
Anita J. Ellis is the Deputy Director for Collections at the Cincinnati Art Museum where she has provided expertise and leadership with respect to exhibitions, publications, collections development and management for almost 40 years. A recognized authority on Cincinnati Decorative Arts, especially ceramics, she has lectured extensively throughout the United States and is widely published in national and international art journals and magazines. In 1992 she won the Florence Roberts Head Book of the Year Award for the catalog Rookwood Pottery: The Glorious Gamble; in 1995 she published Rookwood Pottery: The Glaze Lines, which remains the most extensive handbook on the subject; and, in July 2003, her book on The Ceramic Career of M. Louise McLaughlin, made its debut. Her latest publication, co-authored with Dr. Susan Meyn, is Rookwood and the American Indian: Masterpieces of American Art Pottery from the James J. Gardner Collection. Because of her active professional and community involvement throughout her career, Anita Ellis received the prestigious YWCA Career Woman of Achievement Award in 2004. Ms. Ellis holds an A.B. degree in Fine Art and Art History from Ohio Dominican University where in 2000 she was honored with its Distinguished Alumna Award; a Master’s degree in Art History from the University of Cincinnati; and has completed additional coursework at various institutions including Cambridge University, Cambridge, England.
Cynthia Amnéus has served as the associate curator of costume and textiles at the Cincinnati Art Museum since 1998. She received her B.A. from Edgecliff College of Xavier University and her M.A. from Illinois State University in textiles and fibers. She joined the Art Museum staff in 1991 serving as collection manager and preparator in the costume and textile department. Prior to this, Amnéus taught at Xavier University and the University of Cincinnati. Recent research has focused on the work of dressmakers who worked in Cincinnati in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, resulting in the 2003 exhibition and book A Separate Sphere: Dressmakers in Cincinnati’s Golden Age, 1877–1922. This publication won the 2004 Victorian Society of America Publication Award and was nominated for the Costume Society of America’s publication award. She has curated a number of exhibitions including Beyond Form, Beyond Fashion featuring the Art Museum’s collection of garments by Japanese designer Issey Miyake, John Barlett: Dreaming in Darkness, Hanten and Happi: Traditional Japanese Work Coats from the Sumi Collection, and most recently, Cat Chow. Working with colleagues Julie Aronson and Betsy Wieseman, she contributed costumes to the exhibition Perfect Likeness: European and American Portrait Miniatures at the Cincinnati Art Museum as well as an essay titled "The Art of Ornamental Hairwork" to the catalogue. Amnéus is a member of the Costume Society of America, the Textile Society of America, the Handweaver’s Guild of America, the Midwest Weaver’s Guild, and the American Society of Jewelry Historians.
Dr. Julie Aronson has served as Curator of American Painting, Sculpture and Drawings at the Cincinnati Art Museum since 1999. Dr. Aronson earned her B.A. in art history from Brandeis University, master’s degree from Williams College, and Ph.D. from the University of Delaware. She is the recognized authority on the sculpture of Bessie Potter Vonnoh, the subject of her doctoral dissertation and her touring exhibition and catalogue Bessie Potter Vonnoh: Sculptor of Women (2008). Dr. Aronson’s professional experience includes a position as the assistant curator of American art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, and research posts at the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She has published and lectured on topics ranging from New England folk portraiture to painters and sculptors of the Cincinnati region. Her research on the Cincinnati Impressionist Edward Henry Potthast will culminate with an exhibition and book in 2013. Dr. Aronson has contributed essays to American Naïve Paintings from the National Gallery of Art, The Oxford Dictionary of American Art and other compendia. At the Cincinnati Art Museum, she collaborated with Marjorie E. Wieseman to curate the exhibition Perfect Likeness: European and American Portrait Miniatures from the Cincinnati Art Museum (2006) with its landmark catalogue. Dr. Aronson was on the curatorial team that produced the permanent collection display The Cincinnati Wing: The Story of Art in the Queen City, and edited and co-authored the companion publication.
Amy Miller Dehan, joined the Cincinnati Art Museum in 2001, and has served as the Associate Curator of Decorative Arts and Design since 2007. Dehan was part of the curatorial team that developed The Cincinnati Wing: The Story of Art in the Queen City (2003), and her research on over 1,100 students of the Cincinnati art-carved furniture movement is included in the publication Cincinnati Art-Carved Furniture and Interiors (2003). She has curated several exhibition including Outside the Ordinary: Contemporary Art in Glass, Wood and Ceramics from the Wolf Collection (2009), with catalogue; Force of Nature: Contemporary Japanese Ceramics from the Horvitz Collection (2010); and Going Dutch: Contemporary Design from Local Collections and the Cincinnati Art Museum (2011). Forthcoming exhibitions include: The Art of Sound: Four Centuries of Musical Instruments (2012); and Cincinnati Silver (2014) with catalogue. She has lectured and published on a variety of topics. With a B.A. in art history from the College of William and Mary an M.A. in art history from the University of South Carolina, she has previously held posts at the College of William and Mary’s Muscarelle Museum of Art, the University of South Carolina’s McKissick Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is an alumnus of The Winterthur Fall Institute and the Attingham Summer School.
Jéssica Flores assumed the role of associate curator of contemporary art in September 2008. Flores brings a strong range of local museum and gallery experience to the Cincinnati Art Museum. She served as the director’s project assistant in which she has helped organize aspects of the architecture selection process for the museum’s long-term expansion, led internal efforts related to the director’s appointment for the Venice Biennale and consulted on contemporary acquisitions. Flores has worked closely with the Art Museum's Curatorial division to organize exhibitions featuring the work of noted Cincinnati-based artists including Anthony Luensman and Charley and Edie Harper. Flores also successfully served as the Art Museum’s temporary curator for contemporary art exhibitions including Arenas (2007), Minimal Realism: Charley and Edie Harper (2008) and Maps & Manifests: New Work by Mark Bradford (2008). She was also appointed on-site curator for the special exhibitions Transparent Reflections: Pousette-Dart Works on Paper (2007) and LeWitt x 2: Selections from The LeWitt Collection (2008). Before entering the museum field, Flores spent two years at the University of Cincinnati’s Design, Art, Architecture and Planning Galleries as both a manager and assistant during which she supervised exhibitions in four of their satellite venues. She also assisted the university with their private art collection. In 1998, she earned a B.F.A. in painting and art history from Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia and in 2003 she earned a master’s degree in art history from the School of Art, College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati. Flores also completed her graduate certificate in museum studies at the University of Cincinnati. In her new role at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Flores plans to develop innovative exhibitions that help visitors better understand their world through contemporary art.
Dr. Benedict Leca was appointed curator of European painting and sculpture in spring 2007. A dual French and American national, Dr. Leca earned a B.A. in English literature and a M.A. in art history from the University of Texas at Austin, where he focused on ancient Greek and Roman art. Dr. Leca is a specialist in the art and culture of eighteenth and nineteenth century France, with secondary interests in the historiography of French art and in early modern visual culture. His work centers on understanding the ways in which the circulation and consumption of images and aesthetic ideas can help us re-conceptualize the cultural politics of the modern period. His Ph.D. dissertation, earned at Brown University, focused on the French eighteenth century marine painter Joseph Vernet’s Ports of France paintings and the interpretive engraving series executed after these monumental paintings. Dr. Leca’s professional experience includes stints in the print department at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University and in the department of French paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. He participated in the organization of A Decade of Collecting at the Fogg Art Museum (2000), and Cézanne in Provence at the National Gallery of Art (2006), for which he contributed an essay, Sites of Forgetting: Cézanne and the Provençal Landscape Tradition. He has published articles on a variety of related topics and participated in numerous conferences and symposia at museums and academic institutions including Yale University, The Frick Collection, Harvard University and the National Gallery.
Kristin Spangenberg serves as Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at the Cincinnati Art Museum. She has more than 35 years of experience in her field, having previously served as Assistant Curator of Prints at the Cincinnati Art Museum and Assistant Curator of Graphic Arts at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Ms. Spangenberg earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Davis, and a master’s degree from the University of Michigan. She also served an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Print & Photographic Department and has participated in a seminar on Preservation and Restoration of Photographs at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She is a member of the Print Council of America and the Cincinnati Graphic Arts Forum. Ms. Spangenberg has lectured on many topics, including recent lectures on Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Frank Duveneck. She has also written articles for various publications such as Print Council of America Newsletter, and has written catalogues for many of the Museum’s exhibitions on prints, drawings and photographs.
Dr. Hou-mei Sung has served as the curator of Asian art at the Cincinnati Art Museum since 2002. Dr. Sung received a B.A. in foreign languages and literature and an M.A. in Chinese history, both from the National Taiwan University. She also earned a Ph.D. in museum studies from Case Western Reserve University. Prior to coming to Cincinnati, Dr. Sung served as research associate at the Cleveland Museum of Art and a variety of research and teaching positions in museum and academic fields in Asia and throughout the United States, including the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan; John Carroll University; Colorado College; Cleveland State University; and Case Western Reserve University. She also worked as the executive officer of the Chinese American Faculty and Staff Association and program director of the Chinese Arts and Culture celebration at Cleveland State University. Her research on Ming court painting received a Fulbright scholarship in 2000. Dr. Sung has over thirty publications, including her recent book, The Unknown World of the Ming Court Painters: The Ming Painting Academy.
