MALIBU, CA.- Art historian and curator Andrea Gyorody was named director of the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University. Gyorody has served as interim director since October 2021, succeeding longtime director Michael R. Zakian, who passed away in January 2020. Gyorody brings more than a decade of expertise in 20 th- and 21 st -century European and American art to the Weisman Museum.

“Dr. Andrea Gyorody is a dedicated, passionate leader committed to thought-provoking and inspiring exhibitions,” says Rebecca Carson, managing director of the Lisa Smith Wengler Center for the Arts at Pepperdine. “Throughout her time at Pepperdine, she has proven to be laser-focused on providing high-quality programming and experiences for our patrons, our Pepperdine community, and our Pepperdine students. The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art is in excellent hands under her thoughtful guidance.”

Gyorody most recently served as the Ellen Johnson ’33 Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, where she focused on diversifying the permanent collection through acquisitions of work by emerging artists, as well as collaborating across college departments to create programs to support Oberlin’s diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion efforts. At the Allen, her exhibition Afterlives of the Black Atlantic, co-curated with art historian Matthew Francis Rarey, received a 2020 Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators. Gyorody has previously held positions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Getty Research Institute; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. She has also curated a number of significant projects including I Like LA and LA Likes Me: Joseph Beuys at 100 for Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles (2021); the international traveling exhibition Forms Larger and Bolder: Eva Hesse Drawings (2019–2022), co-curated with Barry Rosen; and THE RENDERING (H X W X D =), a major commission by Barbara Bloom for the inaugural FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art (2018). Beyond curation, Gyorody is an active voice in the art world. Her writing has appeared in publications including Artforum; Hyperallergic; Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture; The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture; and the edited volumes Object—Event—Performance: Art, Materiality, and Continuity Since the 1960s and The Art of War. She was also the founding editor of Digest, the online publication of the Los Angeles-based arts organization Active Cultures.

Passionate about undergraduate education, Gyorody has taught art history at the Cleveland Institute of Art and Otis College of Art and Design. She received a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles; an MA from the Williams College graduate program in the history of art; and a BA from Amherst College.

As interim director of the Weisman Museum, Gyorody has overseen several exhibitions at Pepperdine, including The Cultivators: Highlights from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection, one of the country's most significant collections showcasing African American history. She curated the summer 2022 exhibition Gwynn Murrill: Animal Nature, which was initiated by the late Zakian and featured elegant sculptures from the breadth of Murrill’s career. Looking forward, Gyorody is pleased to partner with the organization Bridge Projects as they restage their exhibition To Bough and to Bend at the Weisman this fall. She is spearheading the speaker series Thought Partners featuring conversations about art and religion, which will commence in September 2022, and is organizing the first West Coast solo exhibition of paintings by Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson for fall 2023.