(New York, November 15, 2012)—Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today the appointment of Nicholas Cullinan as a Curator in the Museum’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. Mr. Cullinan currently holds the position of Curator of International Modern Art at Tate Modern in London, and will join the Metropolitan Museum in the spring.
In making the announcement, Mr. Campbell said: “I am delighted to welcome Nicholas Cullinan to the Metropolitan Museum. He is a formidable scholar who has established himself with distinction in the field of modern and contemporary art over the past decade, particularly through his work on Cy Twombly, Arte Povera, and a range of contemporary artists internationally. He is an impressive curator, lecturer, and teacher who will be a wonderful addition and complement to the curatorial team headed by Sheena Wagstaff here at the Met.”
Ms. Wagstaff, Chairman of the Museum’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, added: “It will be a great pleasure for me to work again with Nick Cullinan, who brings his seemingly inexhaustible knowledge, expertise, and energy to bear on all of his projects. When we worked together at Tate Modern, he organized exhibitions on a dazzling range of subjects, and traveled extensively in Russia and Eastern Europe to acquire new contemporary works to enhance the collection. He will be a great addition to the team I now lead at the Met and a terrific complement to the range of expertise already represented by my colleagues. He will, of course, also be an essential contributor to the Modern & Contemporary program we are currently developing for the Breuer project on Madison Avenue.”
At Tate Modern, Mr. Cullinan was an Assistant Curator (2007-2009) before becoming Curator of International Modern Art in 2009. He worked on such major exhibitions as: Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia (2008); Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons (2008); Pop Life: Art in a Material World (2009); Tacita Dean: FILM, the twelfth Unilever commission for the Turbine Hall (2011); and Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye (2012). He also curated contemporary group shows at Tate Modern, such as Learn to Read (2007) and Stutter (2009). Most recently, he has spearheaded the founding of an acquisition committee to collect modern and contemporary art from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, in addition to curating a series of major forthcoming exhibitions for Tate Modern.
Before joining the Tate in 2007, he was the Hilla Rebay International Fellow at the Guggenheim Museums in New York, Bilbao, and Venice, and he worked previously at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His past experience also includes teaching at institutions such as the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and curating independent projects including the exhibitions Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, and post-war Italian art for the Fondazione Prada’s opening exhibition at Ca’ Corner della Regina, Venice (both 2011); as well as the forthcoming exhibition Pawel Althamer and Anatoly Osmolovsky: Parallel Convergences at the Victoria Foundation, Venice, in 2013.
Born in Connecticut and educated in England, Nicholas Cullinan holds his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute of Art. He has lectured and published widely on modern and contemporary art for journals including Artforum, The Burlington Magazine, and October. In January 2013, he will be a Senior Research Fellow at the Drawing Institute of the Morgan Library and Museum, New York.
# # #
November 15, 2012
Press resources