ATHENS, GA.- Following a national search, the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia has hired Michael Neumeister as its deputy director of curatorial and academic affairs and curator of American art, effective September 15. He will be responsible for setting the museum’s curatorial vision across its wide-ranging collections and exhibition program.

Tricia Miller, interim director of the museum, said, “We are so pleased to welcome Michael Neumeister to the curatorial team at the Georgia Museum of Art. He brings a wealth of leadership and curatorial experience to the position, and we look forward to seeing his vision for the Georgia Museum unfold.”

Neumeister was most recently senior curator at the Columbia Museum of Art (CMA), in Columbia, South Carolina, where he led exhibition programming and directed collections growth and care. He spearheaded key initiatives at the CMA, including the revision of the museum’s collecting strategy and reinstallation of its permanent collection galleries. Neumeister acquired more than 300 objects during his tenure, with significant works by Audrey Flack, Roberto Lugo and Marguerite Zorach among them.





Neumeister brings expertise in modern American art in particular but has overseen collections from the colonial era to the present, including decorative arts, in addition to his experience supervising holdings in historical European and Asian art. His record of exhibitions includes “Interior Lives: Modern American Spaces, 1890 – 1945,” “Tina Williams Brewer: Stories of Grace” and the forthcoming “Barbara Rossi: Fantastic Forms.” Most recently, Neumeister organized the exhibition “Rodney McMillian: A Son of the Soil” and served as editor for and contributor to its accompanying catalogue. His work has been supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Terra Foundation for American Art, Teiger Foundation and Art Bridges, among others.

Neumeister has worked at a variety of institutions, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the American Federation of Arts (AFA), where he developed and managed a range of traveling exhibitions and major publications. At the AFA, his projects included “Art and Activism at Tougaloo College,” “Yoko Ono: Mend Piece” and “Matisse as Printmaker: Works from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation.” He received his bachelor’s degree in anthropology and religion from Hunter College and his master’s degree in art history from the City College of New York, where he also taught art history.