WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS.- The Clark Art Institute announced the appointment of Lisa Saltzman to serve as the Starr Director of its Research and Academic Program (RAP). Saltzman is the chair of the Department of the History of Art at Bryn Mawr College and is the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Chair in the Humanities. She will lead the program’s international agenda of intellectual events and collaborations and will oversee the Clark’s residential Fellows program, all based on the Institute’s 140-acre campus.
“Lisa Saltzman brings exceptional qualifications and tremendous energy to her new role as the leader of our Research and Academic Program, and I am confident that she will enhance RAP’s leadership in visual arts scholarship, engaging diverse voices and sparking global conversations that will broaden its influence,” said Olivier Meslay, Felda and Dena Hardymon Director of the Clark. “In addition to her extensive academic and administrative credentials, Lisa brings a deep knowledge of our program having spent a year here as the Oakley Fellow, during which time she forged wonderful working relationships with our staff and with the faculty of Williams College. We are delighted that she will lead the program into the future and look forward to welcoming her to the Clark in January 2018.”
Saltzman holds both a master’s degree and a doctorate in fine arts from Harvard University, and earned her bachelor’s degree in art and archaeology from Princeton University. Saltzman has earned a number of awards and academic honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in spring 2012. She has served on the Bryn Mawr faculty for twenty-three years, teaching a wide variety of courses in its undergraduate and graduate programs in the history of art, with a particular focus on modern and contemporary art and theory. In addition, she served for seven years as the director of Bryn Mawr’s Center for Visual Culture.
“I am honored to have been entrusted with the responsibility of serving as the next Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program,” said Saltzman. “I spent one of the happiest years of my scholarly life on a fellowship jointly hosted by the Clark and the Oakley Center for Humanities and Social Sciences at Williams College and cherished the opportunity to live in that scholarly community, surrounded by the beauty of the Berkshires and the riches of the Clark library. It’s thrilling to think that I will now be the facilitator of such community and conversation for others. I am eager to start working with my new colleagues at the Clark and Williams College to build on RAP’s remarkable history and secure its place in the future.”
Saltzman is a noted art historian and is the author of three books: Daguerreotypes: Fugitive Subjects, Contemporary Objects (University of Chicago Press, 2015); Making Memory Matter: Strategies of Remembrance in Contemporary Art (University of Chicago Press, 2006); and Anselm Kiefer and Art after Auschwitz (Cambridge University Press, 1999). In collaboration with Eric Rosenberg, she also organized and edited the volume Trauma and Visuality in Modernity (Dartmouth College Press/University Press of New England, 2006).
“Lisa is an exceptional scholar, teacher, and colleague who has enriched the Bryn Mawr College community immeasurably,” said Bryn Mawr President Kimberly Wright Cassidy. “We are proud that she is now honored with the leadership of one of the foremost centers of art historical studies.”
A Massachusetts native, Saltzman has published numerous articles and papers in a wide range of academic journals and scholarly publications, and is a frequent lecturer and presenter at academic conferences throughout the world. She serves as a member of the advisory board for The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory and is a member of an advisory committee for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.
A six-member committee, organized by Marc Gotlieb, director of the Graduate Program in Art History and Class of 1955 Memorial Professor of Art at Williams College, participated in the rigorous international search to select the new director.
In her new role, Saltzman will conceptualize, coordinate, and develop the Institute’s art historical research and academic efforts, creating intersections where the knowledge and insights of museum and university professionals come together.
The Clark is one of a few institutions in the world with a dual mission as both an art museum and an independent center for research and higher education in the visual arts. The Research and Academic Program is internationally recognized as one of the leading centers for research in the visual arts and has established collaborations with partner institutions including the Getty Research Institute (California); the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC); the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (France); the Institute of Art History of the Estonian Academy of Arts; Power Institute at the University of Sydney (Australia); Universidad Nacional de San Martín (Argentina); Asia Art Archive (Hong Kong); Asian Civilizations Museum (Singapore); and the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa), among others.
In addition to hosting its fellowship program on the Clark’s Williamstown campus, RAP maintains an active series of conferences, colloquia, symposia, and scholarly conversations in Williamstown and at venues around the globe. The Manton Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Center for Spain in America, and the Getty Foundation have provided generous support to these programs.
In 2007, the Manton Foundation established an endowment which provides generous support for the Manton Research Center and its programs. Several positions in RAP are also supported through specific endowments, including the Starr directorship (endowed by the Starr Foundation) and the Beinecke, Florence Gould, and Michael Ann Holly Fellowships.
