WATER MILL, NY.- The Parrish Art Museum announced that Kelly Taxter will be the next director of the Museum. The announcement was made by Mary E. Frank, President and Co-Chair of the Board of the prominent art museum, located in the Hamptons, on Eastern Long Island, NY. Taxter will assume her new role on March 22, joining a rising class of new, influential female museum leaders around the country.

“After an extensive search, the Board enthusiastically selected Taxter,” said Frank. “Kelly’s depth of experience in the contemporary art world and at the Jewish Museum, where tradition melds with innovation, will enable her to infuse the Parrish with a new vitality and with a fresh perspective on the role that the Parrish can play in our complex community. She will bring relevance to the Museum while respecting its historic roots. We look forward to her bold vision, her strong leadership and to turning the page to a new and exciting chapter in the history of the Parrish Art Museum. Kelly will benefit from the legacy of the strong directors she succeeds and whose contributions laid the foundation for the Museum’s next phase of excellence.”

“I am honored to have been selected as the next director of the Parrish Art Museum,” said Kelly Taxter. “It is a great privilege to lead the institution at this critical moment of change. I look forward to joining the Parrish board and team in welcoming visitors from all backgrounds to our unparalleled building and sharing exhibitions and collection presentations that reflect not only the artistic history of the East End, but also the bright future of the Museum.”

Kelly Taxter joined the Jewish Museum in 2013 and was most recently the Barnett and Annalee Newman Curator of Contemporary Art, the Museum’s first endowed and named contemporary curator position. While at the Jewish Museum, she organized major surveys of Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Rachel Feinstein, and will serve as guest curator for the first U.S. survey of filmmaker Jonas Mekas in 2022; she led commissions, projects, and exhibitions with Math Bass, Eliza Douglas, Alex Israel, Eva LeWitt, Peter Shire, Laurie Simmons, Valeska Soares, Vivan Suter, and Lawrence Weiner, among others; and co-curated an exhibition on Isaac Mizrahi and thematic group exhibitions including Take Me (I’m Yours) and Unorthodox.

From 2012 to 2013 she was Consulting Curator at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where she organized major solo exhibitions of Martin Creed, Harry Dodge, and Robert Longo.

In 2003, Taxter co-founded Taxter & Spengemann (with Pascal Spengemann), a gallery where she represented artists Lutz Bacher, Frank Benson, Xavier Cha, Matt Johnson, Kalup Linzy, Wardell Milan, and A.L. Steiner, among others.

Taxter studied fine art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University, where she earned her B.A. She received her M.A. from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.