The Revolving Door

Philip Johnson‘s Glass House will soon have a new leader manning the transparent and modern ship. Today, the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced that Henry Urbach will be taking over as director of the historic architectural landmark in New Canaan, Connecticut. Urbach most recently served as curator of architecture and design at SFMOMA, having taken leave from the position last spring to work independently, which included research work at the Glass House itself. Previously, he’d also run a popular gallery in New York for nearly a decade, the eponymous Henry Urbach Architecture. It is currently planned that he will take on the roll at the Glass House on April 2, replacing its current interim director, Rena Zurofsky, who had this to say about his selection:

I met Henry last spring and was struck by his energy and enthusiasm for the site. He seems to me ideal to lead the dedicated Glass House team into even more innovative and exciting programmatic terrain, and to push restoration programs on track. I congratulate Henry, and also Estevan Rael-Galvez, Vice President of Sites at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, on his astute choice.

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One of the main design minds behind the sharp-looking and widely lauded pages of GQ is headed for New York. Thomas Alberty has been named design director of the weekly, which lost Chris Dixon to Vanity Fair in September. The appointment is another boon for the art side of New York‘s masthead, following the recent appointment of Christopher Anderson as the inaugural photographer-in-residence.

“Tom is a hugely talented designer and maybe more importantly a very smart one, and I am thrilled he has accepted our invitation to become the next design director of New York,” said editor-in-chief Adam Moss in a statement issued Friday. “There is a long history of big design talents at this magazine’s helm, and I feel confident that tradition will continue.” Alberty has been with GQ since 2004, most recently as art director, and previously worked at New York, Travel + Leisure, and Men’s Journal. He begins in his new post on February 6 and will join art director Randy Minor, photography director Jody Quon, and the rest of the magazine’s visual team to create what Moss describes as “the next, exciting incarnation of New York.”

New year, new masthead additions! Over at Fortune, Emily Kehe (pictured) has been doing the heavy lifting on the art side since August, when creative director John Korpics left the Time Inc. title to get sporty, as vice president and creative director for print and digital media for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com. Kehe jumped into designing Fortune covers and layouts, overseeing the iPad edition, and managing the department, according to managing editor Andy Serwer. “So much so that when it came time to find a permanent replacement for John, and while we did consider other candidates, I really needed to look no further than a few doors down to Emily’s office,” he wrote in an e-mail announcing Kehe’s appointment as design director. A native of Colorado, she studied publication design and photography at the University of Miami School of Communication before working at publications including The Miami Herald and The Boston Globe. Kehe began her career at Fortune as a freelancer in 2008 and later returned to help Korpics with the magazine’s 2010 redesign.

And over at New York, editor-in-chief Adam Moss and photography director Jody Quon have tapped Christoper Anderson as the magazine’s first photographer-in-residence, a position created both to showcase his work and deepen New York’s commitment to original photography. “We thought that we could be the ideal outlet for Chris to explore his painter’s palette of image-making,” said Quon in a statement issued Monday by the magazine. “Chris’s commitment to journalism combined with his range of artistry makes him the perfect partner for the magazine.” Anderson, an acclaimed photographer and member of Magnum Photos, will shoot editorial work exclusively for New York on an array of subjects in a full range of styles, from photojournalism to portraiture to conceptual work. His photography will appear regularly beginning with this week’s issue, which features Anderson’s surveillance-style photos in its “Classifieds” cover story.

Apparently when James Cuno enters a cultural institution, he doesn’t just take the reigns, but takes over completely. Just four months ago, the former head of the Art Institute of Chicago took over as the new President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, and all the various museums and organizations that fall under that giant blanket. Now the Getty Museum has announced that its acting director, David Bomford, who replaced Michael Brand just last year, has stepped down to move back to his native London. In his place as the new acting director? You guessed it: James Cuno. This, of course, makes him the boss of himself, which in turns means that he can now having meetings about the museum in mirrors or even just relatively shiny surfaces. As for Bomford, here’s his statement about his leaving:

I have been privileged to serve as acting director of the Getty Museum and to have the opportunity to lead an incredible staff. Whether working with curators as they identified objects to add to our growing collections, interacting with the highly creative teams who work collaboratively to develop the Getty’s internationally recognized exhibitions, or with our dedicated team of educators, my experience has been extraordinarily rewarding in every aspect.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University continues its pace toward becoming a real, full-fledged institution with two new announcements this week. First, following the hiring of their first director, Michael Rush, last summer, they’ve now landed Alison Gass as their new curator of contemporary art. Gass, who was picked last year by the NY Times‘ as one of nine up and coming curators, has worked in New York for the Jewish Museum, the MoMA, and the Brooklyn Museum, and most recently on the other coast as an assistant curator at the SFMOMA. Second in the new news, the Broad recently announced its first two debut exhibitions:

The Broad/MSU’s inaugural exhibitions, curated by founding director Michael Rush, include “Global Groove 1973/2012,” which will use Nam June Paik’s seminal 1973 video “Global Groove” as a jumping off point to explore current trends in international video art, and “In Search of Time,” which will investigate artists’ expressions of time and memory by creating dialogues among works by artists including Josef Albers, Romare Bearden, Damien Hirst, Toba Khadoori, Andy Warhol, Eadweard Muybridge and Sam Jury, among others.

The Broad Museum, in its nifty new Zaha Hadid-designed building, is set to open on April 21st of next year.

This just in: Dwell is a wrapping up a busy 2011 with two new hires. The San Francisco- and New York-based shelter magazine—turned burgeoning media empire—has poached its new photo director, Anna Alexander (at top right) from Conde Nast’s Wired, while senior editor Kelsey Keith (at bottom right) will bring her experience as the founding editor-in-chief of Architizer and New York editor of Curbed.com to Dwell‘s front-of-the-book section, In The Modern World, and to features for the magazine. Other recent additions to the Dwell masthead include publisher Brenda Saget and art director Alejandro Chavetta, hired from San Francisco Magazine. Look for the freshly renovated team to hit the ground running in 2012.

In the throes of a massive renovation, the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is a hive of design news. Today the institution announced that it has raised the $54 million required for the overhaul, a collaboration between design architect Gluckman Mayner Architects and executive architect Beyer Blinder Belle that will increase Cooper-Hewitt’s exhibition space by 60 percent (to approximately 16,000 square feet), as well as reconfigure conservation and collection-storage facilities. Meanwhile, much progress has already been made: renovation is complete on the museum’s two townhouses, which house the—new and improved!—National Design Library, the master’s program in the history of decorative arts and design, and administrative offices. Now comes the main event: renovating the Carnegie Mansion, a task that entails historic preservation (including restoring the exterior masonry and freshening up the wrought-iron fence) and is aiming for LEED certification. When the museum reopens in 2013, visitors will discover a spectacular, new third-floor gallery where the library used to be, as well as expanded and restored galleries on first and second floors.

“It is thrilling to see our vision for Cooper-Hewitt’s redesign becoming a reality,” said Bill Moggridge, director of the museum, in a statement issued today. “Restoring and transforming the Carnegie Mansion and elevating and expanding the museum’s online user experience will broadly increase access to the museum’s rich resources, scholarship, and collections.” Renovation on the digital front will be masterminded by Aussie tech guru Seb Chan, the newly appointed director of digital and emerging media. He comes to Cooper-Hewitt from the the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, where he brought the museum’s collection online, integrated digital content production into everyday practices, and pioneered the use of mobile devices, QR codes, and iPads to deliver gallery experiences. Chan names “increasing public access while communicating the important role of design in building a better world” as among his top priorities for Cooper-Hewitt. Tonight mediabistro.com founder and hostess with the mostest Laurel Touby opens her home for a party to welcome Chan and toast to successful expansion in the physical and virtual worlds.

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As we speculated on Friday when it was announced that David Chipperfield had been named as next year’s curator for the architecture portion of the Venice Beinnale, there’s been a sudden reversal in last month’s leadership swap within the event’s upper ranks. Robin Pogrebin at the NY Times reports that Giulio Malgara, a food importer who had been hired (presumably due to political patronage) by Silvio Berlusconi to replace long-time and much-beloved Biennale director Paolo Baratta, has now resigned. Given that Berlusconi is now out as well, and that his original hiring was met with such controversy, it’s certainly not a surprise move. Now it’s only a matter of time to find out if Baratta will be staying on past mid-December, when his original contract, and what was suppose to be his final days in the post, expires. Pogrebin reports that “he has also been mentioned as a possible minister of culture” in Italy’s brand new government.

There’s to be some new blood at New York’s High Line soon. It’s been announced that Cecilia Alemani has been appointed the new curator and director of the High Line Art Program, taking over from Lauren Ross, who left the position at the start of the summer after having taken a job at the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa. Alemani had previously worked as an independent curator and writer, working with organizations like the Tate Modern, the MCA in Chicago, and the MoMA and its P.S.1, to name just a few. Most recently she was found guest curating for Performa 11 and collaborating on the Frieze Art Fair in London. Here’s a bit from the announcement:

“After an extensive search, it is clear that Cecilia is the best candidate to lead High Line Art. Cecilia is a thoughtful, forward-thinking curator who will bring an innovative approach to structuring the public art program on the High Line,” said Donald R. Mullen, Jr., the founding supporter of High Line Art and Board member of Friends of the High Line. “I have often said that the High Line is the new museum mile. High Line Art celebrates the park’s role in connecting two neighborhoods that make up the cultural hub of New York City, with the more than 400 galleries and cultural organizations that populate the streets below the park. Cecilia’s curatorial leadership will elevate High Line Art to new level in New York City and the international art world.

A recent shakeup at one of the world’s largest and most well-known art fairs is still making waves into this week, with the news that the Venice Biennale‘s chairman for the last four years (and for two years back at the end of the 1990s), Paolo Baratta, has been let go. The Art Newspaper writes that Baratta has been largely responsible for turning the exhibition around, making it not only more successful but more approachable as well, by providing and thinking through the necessary logistics to pull off such a large event that regularly pulls in more than 300,000 visitors. However, as of January 1st of next year, he’ll be replaced by Giulio Malgara, a food importer and founder of a successful company that tracks television ratings. Given Baratta’s legacy, this change hasn’t been received the most favorable of responses, with the AN reporting that Venice’s mayor has publicly criticized the move, claiming that it reeks of political lobbies in “this rotten system” and that “Giulio Malgara is an unsuitable person to carry out the role of chairman of the Venice Biennale.” As the next exhibition isn’t until 2013, we suppose we’ll just have to wait and see how it all pans out, or at least until the cracks start showing, if at all.