Milwaukee Art Museum welcomes new Curator of Photography

Milwaukee Art Museum announces new Curator of Photography

Milwaukee, Wis. – December 3, 2012 – The Milwaukee Art Museum is pleased to announce the appointment of Lisa J. Sutcliffe as the new Curator of Photography. Sutcliffe will join the Museum in January 2013 from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where she has served as assistant curator in the Department of Photography since 2007.

Lisa Sutcliffe has a wide-ranging curatorial record from her time at SFMoMA. Most recently, she organized the SFMOMA presentation of Naoya Hatakeyama: Natural Stories in association with the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. In 2009, she organized The Provoke Era: Postwar Japanese Photography, the first survey of SFMOMA’s internationally renowned collection of Japanese photography, and Photography Now: China, Japan, Korea. Additionally, she served as assistant curator for Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective co-organized with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2012); and Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera Since 1870, co-organized with Tate Modern (2010).

Sutcliffe has organized film screenings, lectures and panels with internationally acclaimed artists at SFMOMA and other Bay Area institutions, and written about contemporary art and photography for diverse publications, and contributed to books for artists including Penelope Umbrico, Sean McFarland, and a forthcoming publication with Naoya Hatakeyama.

Before working at SFMoMA, Sutcliffe was the Koch Curatorial Fellow at the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts. She holds an MA in the history of art from Boston University, where she specialized in the history of photography, and a BA in art history from Wellesley College.

“Lisa Sutcliffe brings a wealth of experience and a great passion for photography to the Milwaukee Art Museum as we continue to build the collection and programs of the Museum’s thriving curatorial department,” said Brady Roberts, chief curator of the Milwaukee Art Museum. “This is a critical juncture for the Museum as it begins to define a greatly expanded gallery presence for photography in its reinstallation plans. It is important to have a professional and respected colleague such as Lisa Sutcliffe with us in this process.”

Sutcliffe fills the position previously held by Lisa Hostetler, who left the Museum in July 2012 for the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM
Celebrating its 125th anniversary in 2013, the Milwaukee Art Museum collection houses over 30,000 works, with strengths in 19th- and 20th-century American and European art, contemporary art, American decorative arts, and folk and self-taught art. The Museum campus is located on the shores of Lake Michigan and spans three buildings, including the Santiago Calatrava-designed Quadracci Pavilion and the Eero Saarinen-designed Milwaukee County War Memorial Center. For more information, please visit www.mam.org.