March 3, 2011 - 5:44pm
'U' officials name Joseph Rosa as next director of UMMA
BY KYLE SWANSON
University officials announced this afternoon that Joseph Rosa, the chief curator of architecture and design at the Art Institute of Chicago, will be the next director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art.
Rosa will take the post effective July 1, pending approval by the University’s Board of Regents. He will be the seventh director of UMMA, succeeding James Steward who left the University in 2009 after 11 years during which he oversaw a major capital campaign, construction and renovation project to accept the directorship at the Princeton University Art Museum.
Rosa was selected after an international search conducted by a 14-member search advisory committee set up by Univeristy President Mary Sue Coleman.
In a statement released this afternoon, Coleman said she was very excited that Rosa would be taking the helm at UMMA.
"We are so pleased that Joe Rosa has agreed to lead the University of Michigan Museum of Art at this particularly auspicious and exciting moment in its history," Coleman said in a statement. "As an accomplished scholar, teacher, thinker and leader with wide-ranging museum experience and numerous publications to his credit, Joe has dedicated his career to bringing the visual arts, design and culture to life for a broad range of audiences.”
In the same statement, Rosa said he too was excited to be coming to the University.
“I am thrilled and honored to be given this wonderful opportunity to lead the University of Michigan Museum of Art into the future at this very special time in its history,” he said in a statement.
Prior to his current position with the Art Institute of Chicago, Rosa was a curator the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, a curator at the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum or Art in Pittsburgh. He also worked as the chief curator at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. and as the director of the Columbia Architecture Galleries in New York.
Rosa has curated more than 30 exhibitions and written 14 books, including works that have appeared in Architectural Design, Assemblage, Casabell, Oculus, Praxis and Progressive Architecture.
The University’s art collection is widely respected as one of the larger collections among universities, with over 18,000 pieces in its collection, and is one of the oldest university art collections in the country.
