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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > May > 07 > Entry
Blanton Museum names Ned Rifkin, former Smithsonian Under Secretary of Art, as its new director
Ned Rifkin, former Under Secretary for Art at the Smithsonian Institution, has been named the new director the University of Texas’ Blanton Museum of Art, university officials announced Thursday.
Rifkin, 59, replaces Jesse Otto Hite who retired in 2008 after 30 years with the museum. With Rifkin’s appointment, the Blanton Museum will move from the College of Fine Arts and report to the UT Provost’s office.
The university’s Ransom Center, a rare book and manuscript library and museum, also reports to the provost’s office.
Rifkin will also will hold the position of full professor of art and art history and hold the position as special advisor to UT president William Powers.
At the Smithsonian, Rifkin served as the top administrator overseeing eight art museums, a position he held from 2004 to 2008. During his tenure at the Smithsonian, Rifkin oversaw the renovation of an historic building for the American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. He had previously been director and chief curator at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum after serving as director of Houston’s Menil Collection from 2000 to 2002 and the High Museum in Atlanta from 1991 to 1999.
Rifkin received a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University and a master’s and doctoral degrees in art history form the University of Michigan.
A champion of contemporary art and public art, Rifkin organized a major exhibit of the work of minimalist painter Agnes Martin while he was director of the Menil. When he was director of the Hirshhorn, Rifkin commissioned conceptual artist Olafur Eliasson to reconceive the entrance to the historic museum building by shifting the front entrance to a different side of the building.
“I’m interested in all contemporary creativity,” Rifkin told an interviewer last year. “Art is a part of culture. Culture is what we make collectively. Artists are a kind of beacon.”
Photo courtesy Smithsonian Institution.
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