OBERLIN, OH.- The Allen Memorial Art Museum has named Andrea Gyorody to the position of Ellen Johnson ’33 Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, overseeing the museum’s outstanding collection of 20th and 21st century art. Gyorody will begin work at the AMAM on April 3.

Gyorody comes to the AMAM from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), where she was Assistant Curator in the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. During her two and a half years at LACMA, Gyorody organized exhibitions of erotic prints and drawings from Germany and Austria; art created at the time of the 1918–19 communist revolution; and Jugendstil and art nouveau highlights from across LACMA’s collections. An exhibition on expressionism and abstraction will go on view this May. Gyorody also co-wrote a forthcoming handbook on the Rifkind’s holdings, and worked with staff, visiting scholars, and students to make the Rifkind collection accessible to a broader public.

“My colleagues and I are so pleased to welcome Andrea Gyorody to Oberlin. Her experience in all aspects of museum work and her desire to robustly connect the AMAM’s collection of modern and contemporary art with socially engaged practices will ensure vibrant future programs and educational opportunities for Oberlin College students and the broader public,” said Andria Derstine, the AMAM’s John G. W. Cowles Director.

At the AMAM, Gyorody will oversee the AMAM collection of 20th and 21st century works, which includes important paintings by Gorky, Kirchner, Modigliani, Monet, Picasso, and others. Artists from the second half of the 20th century are well represented in the collection, including Chuck Close, Richard Diebenkorn, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol. The AMAM also holds important works by Eva Hesse, as well as the artist’s archives.

Gyorody will work with faculty and students to mount exhibitions of contemporary art, organize related programs, and acquire new works for the collection. She will work with other staff on an upcoming exhibition celebrating the legacy of Ellen Johnson, for whom her curatorship is named, to be shown in conjunction with the AMAM centennial in 2017–18. Ellen Johnson (1910–1992), an Oberlin alumna, inspired generations of the college’s students as a professor of modern and contemporary art history. Her friendships with artists led to many timely acquisitions for the AMAM, through gifts and purchases as well as through the bequest of her personal art collection. Johnson also bequeathed to Oberlin College her home, built by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1949 and purchased by Johnson in 1968; today it remains open for public tours.

“I am greatly looking forward to joining an outstanding staff and becoming a part of the Oberlin community, which has already been warm and welcoming. I am eager to collaborate with faculty, staff, and students to craft a modern and contemporary program that is inclusive, provocative, and responsive to the present moment. In my view, art should function as a prompt for dialogue and engagement, and I am excited to bring my experience and ideas to the Allen,” said Gyorody.

A Ph.D. candidate in art history at the University of California, Los Angeles, Gyorody is completing a dissertation on the late German artist Joseph Beuys and his conception of “social sculpture,” an important and understudied precedent for contemporary participatory and socially engaged practices.

Gyorody earned her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from Amherst College before going on to Williams College, where she completed a master’s degree in art history in 2009. She has held internships and assistantships at the Williams College Museum of Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of of American Art; Hammer Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and in LACMA's Department of Museum Art.

The Allen Memorial Art Museum cares for more than 15,000 works that provide a comprehensive overview of the history of art. A non-profit institution that is part of Oberlin College, the AMAM works with faculty and students to promote direct study of original works of art, foster visual literacy, and deepen appreciation for the diversity of the world’s cultures. Founded in 1917 with the idea that learning about art is important for everyone, the museum offers free admission.