BALTIMORE.-Doreen Bolger, Director of The Baltimore Museum of Art, has announced the appointment of Dr. David Park Curry in the newly created position of Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and American Painting & Sculpture. Currently Curator of American Arts at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Curry will join the BMA in September 2005.

“We are delighted to have one of the foremost curators of American art in this country join the BMA,” said BMA Director Doreen Bolger. “David Curry’s experience, expertise, and outstanding record of scholarship will be an enormous asset to the Museum as we begin planning the reinstallation of the BMA’s distinguished collection of American paintings and decorative arts.”

Dr. Curry has more than 20 years of curatorial experience working with major collections of American art in three public art museums: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution (1981–1983), Denver Art Museum (1983–1990), and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (1990–2005). He has organized numerous exhibitions including James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, a retrospective that set attendance records in 1984; An American Sampler: Folk Art from the Shelburne Museum, a collaboration between the Denver Art Museum and National Gallery of Art in 1987; and Childe Hassam: An Island Garden Revisited, a traveling exhibition co-organized by the Denver Art Museum and the Yale University Art Gallery in 1990. His most recent exhibition, Mr. Whistler’s Galleries, a joint project with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Freer Gallery of Art, was on view in Washington in 2003–2004.

At the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) Dr. Curry organized the exhibitions and wrote catalogues for American Dreams: Paintings and Decorative Arts from the Warner Collection, Fabergé: The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885-1915, a traveling exhibition organized with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Amon Carter Museum, and Denver Museum of Art. In 1990 Curry completed a major reinstallation of the VMFA’s galleries, At Home: American Art in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, a popular long-term installation that was originally intended as a temporary survey.

Among the many significant acquisitions Dr. Curry made for the VMFA were paintings by James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Henry Ossawa Tanner, and Thomas Hart Benton, as well as a William and Mary period japanned high chest, an 18th-century ivory cabinet exported from Vizagapatam, India, to Philadelphia during the Federal period, and an elegant Wedgwood anti-slave trade medallion. He also completed a major reupholstery project with pieces ranging from the mid-18th to the early 20th century, and was responsible for rehousing a significant portion of the American collection in period frames.

“Curators with David Curry's level of experience in making major acquisitions and organizing exhibitions are extremely difficult to attract,” said Jay Fisher, BMA Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs. “The BMA’s renowned decorative arts collection is widely recognized as one of the most important holdings of American 18th-century furniture and silver, particularly from Maryland. David’s remarkable achievements in both the fields of decorative arts and American painting and sculpture will provide the Museum with a curator capable of considering a more integrated approach to the installation of American art.”

Dr. Curry graduated from University of North Dakota summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1968. He received his Master of Arts from University of Kansas, Lawrence, in 1974, and Ph.D. from Yale University in 1981 with a doctoral dissertation on Replication, Pattern, and Symbolic Form: The Connecticut State Capitol in the Context of 19th-Century Public Design. He has served as an advisor to the NEA and NEH, Getty Museum, and Museum Loan Network, and is a current member of the United States Senate Curatorial Advisory Board. He lectures and publishes widely on American painting and decorative arts topics, and contributes regularly to many art journals. His latest book, James McNeill Whistler: Uneasy Pieces was released in November 2004.