INDIANAPOLIS.- The Indianapolis Museum of Art announced today the appointment of Joanne Cubbs as Adjunct Curator of American Art and several promotions within its curatorial department. The promotions include Ronda Kasl to Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture before 1800; Lisa Freiman to Senior Curator of Contemporary Art; Rebecca Uchill to Associate Curator of Contemporary Art; and Sarah Green to Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art.

“We have an extraordinary team of curators who have skillfully studied, cared for, and grown the IMA’s permanent collection of more than 50,000 works of art that spans 5,000 years of creativity from across the continents. As the IMA celebrates its 125th anniversary in 2008, I look forward to many forthcoming dynamic projects and important contributions of scholarship by the IMA’s talented curatorial staff,” said Maxwell L. Anderson, the Melvin & Bren Simon director and CEO.

Joanne Cubbs joins the IMA as Adjunct Curator of American Art. She previously served as Founding Head and Curator of the Folk Art Department at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, where she developed one of the first programs in a major museum devoted to contemporary self-taught and vernacular art. Working to expand the boundaries of the mainstream art world, Cubbs has curated exhibitions and authored publications on a wide range of subjects, from the Hmong textiles of Southeast Asia to the wood carvings of Josephus Farmer and the apocalyptic finger paintings of Eugene Von Bruenchenhein. One of her best-known essays, "Rebels, Mystics and Outcasts: the Romantic Artist Outsider," examines the mythology underlying our conceptions of modern art. She was also a co-editor and contributing author to the book Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt, which accompanied the recent exhibition organized by The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. She received her master’s degree in art history from the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Ronda Kasl joined the IMA in 1992 as Assistant Curator of European Painting and Sculpture before 1800. During her tenure, the IMA has acquired works by the Master of the Legend of St. Ursula, Gaspar Núñez Delgado, Jan Miense Molenaer, Ludolf Backhuysen, Francisco Rizi, and Vicente López. She has curated exhibitions including Rembrandt: Face to Face, Raphael’s Fornarina; Giovanni Bellini and the Art of Devotion, Dürer’s Arch of Maximilian, and Painting in Spain in the Age of Enlightenment: Goya and his Contemporaries. Kasl and IMA conservator David Miller conceived the recent Sebastiano Mainardi: The Science of Art. She is working on a major exhibition on Spanish and Latin American baroque art, to be announced later this year. She also is responsible for the IMA’s care of the Clowes Collection. Kasl received a master’s degree in art history from New York University. Prior to coming to the IMA she was a Paul Mellon Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Lisa Freiman joined the IMA in 2002 as Associate Curator of Contemporary Art and was promoted to Curator of Contemporary Art in 2005. She oversaw a major expansion and reinstallation of the contemporary galleries, expanding the IMA’s popular Forefront Series, which features a 4,000-square-foot gallery suite dedicated to changing exhibitions of contemporary art. She introduced a new video art gallery and launched an endowed program of changing site-responsive contemporary art installations for the IMA’s Efroymson Entry Pavilion, which has included new commissions by Tony Feher, Julianne Swartz, and FriendsWithYou. Freiman has been responsible for advancing the IMA’s contemporary art program internationally at a remarkable pace—through acquisitions, exhibitions, commissions and publications. Since arriving at the IMA, Freiman has curated exhibitions including María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Everything Is Separated by Water and solo exhibitions of artists Ghada Amer, Amy Cutler, Ingrid Calame and Ernesto Neto. She also published the first books on Cutler and Campos-Pons. During her tenure, the IMA has acquired Guillermo Kuitca’s Everything, 2004; Gregory Crewdson’s Untitled, 1994; and Ingrid Calame’s From Drawing #258, Traces of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 2008. In addition to her leadership of the IMA’s contemporary art department, Freiman serves as Director of the Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park. Freiman received her master’s and doctorate in art history at Emory University. Prior to joining the IMA, Freiman worked as Assistant Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at University of Georgia, Athens.

Rebecca Uchill joined the IMA in September 2005 during the expansion of the contemporary department and has been a key member of the contemporary team. Uchill curated exhibitions featuring the artists Omer Fast, Adrian Shiess, and art collectives spurse and RothStauffenberg. She recently curated the exhibition On Procession, now on view in the IMA’s McCormack Forefront Galleries through August 10, 2008. In early August, Uchill will become Adjunct Associate Curator of Contemporary Art and will pursue a doctorate in art history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She will continue to work part-time as Adjunct Associate Curator through the opening of the Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, a project with which she is intimately involved. Uchill received a master’s degree in art history from Williams College.

Sarah Urist Green has been promoted to Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art. Green has assisted with the planning of the On Procession exhibition and has worked on many projects including the exhibition Ingrid Calame: Traces of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and an installation by Julianne Swartz. Green is a member of the Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park team. She is the curator of the Lida Abdul exhibition, currently on view in the Holeman Video Gallery, and she also is curating the upcoming Forefront exhibition Dawoud Bey: Class Pictures. Green received her master’s degree in art history from Columbia University.