Art World Visionary Robert Storr Reappointed Dean of Yale School of Art

Robert Storr has been reappointed as dean of the Yale School of Art, announced President Richard C. Levin.

Robert Storr has been reappointed as dean of the Yale School of Art, announced President Richard C. Levin.

The Dean begins his second five-year term July 1.

“Dean Storr is valued for his refreshing and exciting vision for the school and for opening the school to new sources of artistic influence, both domestically and internationally, ” noted Levin in a letter announcing the appointment to the Yale community.

“His colleagues have found him to be a great intellectual resource, eager to share his broad knowledge and expertise. Under his leadership, international student enrollment has increased substantially and students are benefiting from his fundraising success,” continued Levin.

An accomplished a painter, writer, critic and curator, Storr came to Yale as dean of the School of Art in 2006, shortly after he was named the commissioner of the 2007 Venice Biennale, becoming the first American invited to assume that position.

As a curator, Storr made his mark early with a number of major exhibitions at MoMA and elsewhere, which enhanced the public prominence of such artists as Elizabeth Murray, Gerhard Richter, Max Beckmann, Tony Smith and Robert Ryman. He also organized a number of reinstallations of MoMA’s permanent collection, covering such topics as abstraction and the modern grotesque.

Storr is the author of dozens of monographs and catalogs and has been a regular contributor to arts publications, including Art in America, Artforum, Art Press, Art & Design, Art Press (Paris) and Frieze (London) as well as wide-circulation newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post.

In 2002 he was named the first Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. He also taught at the CUNY graduate center and the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies as well as the Rhode Island School of Design, Tyler School of Art, New York Studio School and Harvard University, and has been a frequent lecturer in this country and abroad.

Named by New York Magazine in 2007 as among the nine most influential leaders in the art world, Storr was described by the magazine as a “vital link between the museum world and academia.” The citation also noted that Storr is “an artist who’s logged enough studio time to have a special regard for painters’ painters … and a gifted writer who can make us appreciate them, too.”

His many honors include a Penny McCall Foundation Grant for painting, a Norton Family Foundation Curator Grant, and honorary doctorates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maine College of Art. He also received awards from the American Chapter of the International Association of Art Critics, a special AICA award for Distinguished Contribution to the Field of Art Criticism, an ICI Agnes Gund Curatorial Award, and the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History from the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. In 2000 the French Ministry of Culture presented him with the medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.

Among Storr’s many innovations during his tenure as dean was the gallery he established in the new award-winning Sculpture Building at Edgewood Avenue. The gallery is devoted to bringing examples of contemporary art from around the world to New Haven. When it opened in 2009 Storr noted that the gallery “will break out of the North-American/East-Coast-centered view of the art world, bringing to our students, staff and the public ‘breaking news’ from a diversity of international artists.”

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Media Contact

Dorie Baker: dorie.baker@yale.edu, 203-432-1345