Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University Appoints Kimerly Rorschach as New Director

Kimerly Rorschach, who has been director of the University of Chicago's David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art for the past nine years, will become the first director of the new Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Duke President Nannerl O. Keohane announced today.

Opening in October 2005, the new $23 million museum designed by Rafael Vinoly will have a strong focus on modern and contemporary art and will be a cornerstone in Duke's commitment to support the arts on campus and in the Raleigh-Durham community.

Since 1994, Rorschach has been the Dana Feitler Director of the Smart Museum of Art. There, she increased the museum's endowment from $3 million to $15 million in nine years, secured important grants and built significant collections in modern, contemporary and East Asian art, acquiring more than 500 works of art for the museum's permanent collection. She also increased the museum's private annual support by 300 percent. Rorschach is an associate professor in the University of Chicago's department of art history and a lecturer at the University of Chicago law school, where she co-teaches a course in art law.

"I am honored and tremendously excited to have an opportunity to launch the new Nasher Museum of Art," Rorschach said. "The arts at Duke play a vital role in campus life and in the surrounding community, and this extraordinary new building will provide a platform for many of the university's wonderfully diverse arts programs and initiatives. I am inspired by the brilliant vision for the museum that Rafael Vinoly has designed, and I am confident that Duke's Nasher Museum of Art will become one of the country's great university art museums."

The 66,000-square-foot Nasher Museum of Art is taking shape between the University's East and West Campuses, near the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Anderson Street and Campus Drive. World-renowned architect Rafael Vinoly designed the central space, a 10,000-square-foot atrium of steel and glass, to be the heart of the museum. Fanning out from this entrance will be five separate pavilions containing three large galleries, a lecture hall, education wing, cafe, museum shop, administrative offices and sculpture gardens. All will be connected through a "great hall" covered by the architect's signature steel-and-glass roof. Construction on the wooded nine-acre lot began in January 2003, and the museum is scheduled to open in October 2005.

Rorschach's appointment follows a six-month national search involving more than 100 candidates. The appointment was recommended to Keohane and Provost Peter Lange by a nine-member search committee chaired by economics professor Neil De Marchi. Keohane says Rorschach's appointment also had the strong support of President-elect Richard Brodhead, who succeeds Keohane in July 2004. Curator Sarah Schroth is serving as the museum's interim director.

"I am delighted for Duke and our extended community that Kim Rorschach will become the inaugural director of our splendid new Nasher Museum," President Nannerl O. Keohane said. "She will be taking over just as we move into a spectacular new facility, one we expect to become a major cultural resource for our campus and our region, and a destination for the arts in the Southeast. President-elect Brodhead, Provost Lange and I are confident that under her vibrant leadership, the Nasher Museum of Art will be a catalyst for all of the arts to flourish across Duke in the years to come."

"Kim has proven herself to be a dynamic leader who combines scholarly experience, leadership and passion for art with the personal skills to build strong ties with everyone on campus and in the broader community," Lange said. "She impressed everyone with her vision for this marvelous new museum, building on a very impressive record in Chicago of organizing major exhibitions, and of increasing private annual support, student involvement and the museum's interaction with other university departments."

Formerly the Duke University Museum of Art, the museum was founded in 1969 and has more than 13,000 works of art in its permanent collection. Currently housed inside the old science building on East Campus, the new Nasher Museum of Art is one of many important new building and expansion projects at Duke, and part of a campus-wide investment of nearly $500 million in new and renovated facilities.

To date, the Nasher Museum of Art has raised $17.7 million toward the $23 million project. The museum's namesake is Raymond D. Nasher, an internationally prominent art collector, philanthropist and real estate developer who graduated from Duke in 1943. He provided the largest gift of $7.5 million toward the new building. The Nasher Foundation of Dallas subsequently gave another $2.5 million in honor of Nasher, its founder. In October 2003, Nasher opened the Nasher Sculpture Center, the first institution in the world dedicated exclusively to the exhibition of modern and contemporary sculpture, in his hometown of Dallas, Texas. The Duke Endowment of Charlotte has also contributed $2.5 million to name the atrium the Mary D.B.T. Semans Grand Hall in honor of its chairman emerita and former Duke trustee Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans.

As director of the Nasher Museum of Art, Rorschach will play a key role in shaping the museum with special attention to building the modern and contemporary art collections, developing a comprehensive program of special exhibitions and working with artists, critics and scholars to create an exciting array of related programs for Duke's students, faculty and extended community.

Before assuming leadership of the Smart Museum of Art, Rorschach held curatorial positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia. A trustee of the Association of Art Museum Directors, which represents the directors of 175 major art museums in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, Rorschach chairs the association's government affairs committee.

Rorschach is an accomplished curator who has written numerous exhibition catalogues and scholarly studies. She has organized 15 exhibitions ranging from 18th-century European art to international contemporary art, including the upcoming "Between Past and Future: New Chinese Photography and Video," co-organized with the International Center of Photography and the Asia Society in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. A Fulbright Scholar, Rorschach holds a Ph.D. in art history from Yale University and earned her B.A. from Brandeis University. Rorschach and her husband, John Hart, have two daughters, ages 12 and 14.

Rafael Vinoly Commissioned by Duke in 2000, the Uruguayan-born architect Rafael Vinoly recently completed the highly acclaimed Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia and the new home for Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. Vinoly's innovative designs have been chosen for expansion projects at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and the Brooklyn Children's Museum. He also designed the new Tampa Museum of Art. More recently, Vinoly was the runner-up for the redisign of the World Trade Center site in New York City. [September 11 memorial project on the site of the former World Trade Center in New York City.] Other projects include the design of the Tokyo International Forum and the Leicester City Performing Arts Center in England. Vinoly is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a recipient of numerous awards, including the AIA medal of honor.

Nasher Family Raymond D. Nasher is one of this country's leading collectors of modern and contemporary sculpture. The Nasher family has strong and deep ties to Duke. A graduate of the class of 1943, Raymond Nasher served on the university board of trustees from 1968 through 1974, at which point he was elected trustee emeritus. Nasher's daughter, Nancy Nasher Haemisegger, is president of NorthPark Development Co. in Dallas, and serves on Duke's Board of Trustees and the board of the Nasher Foundation. She is a graduate of Duke Law School (J.D. '79), a lifetime member of the law school's board of visitors and a member of the steering committee of the Campaign for Duke, the university's recently completed $2.36 billion fund-raising campaign.

Raymond Nasher was one of the first real estate developers in the United States to place art, primarily sculpture, in commercial retail complexes. He did this believing that art nurtures intellectual and aesthetic curiosity and enhances the overall experience of every environment. Nasher also established the Dallas Business Committee for the Arts in 1988 and has served as a board member of the Dallas Museum of Art, The Dallas Opera, The Dallas Symphony, the Dallas Theater Center, Ballet Dallas, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. He has been appointed to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities by three presidents, and has also served on the committees and councils of numerous museums, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

[See the May-June 2003 issue of Duke Magazine for a profile of Nasher and the Nasher Sculpture Center.]