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Art Institute of Chicago appoints Suzanne Folds McCullagh and Martha Tedeschito key positions

The Art Institute of Chicago announced that Suzanne Folds McCullagh and Martha Tedeschi, both accomplished Art Institute curators with specialties in earlier prints and drawings and American modern prints and drawings, respectively, have been appointed to key positions within the Department of Prints and Drawings. Suzanne Folds McCullagh, who joined the department in 1975, will become the Anne Vogt Fuller and Marion Titus Searle Chair and Curator of Prints and Drawings , effective immediately. As head of the department, McCullagh succeeds Douglas Druick, who was selected as the Art Institute’s President and Eloise W. Martin Director in August 2011. Martha Tedeschi, who joined the department in 1982, will become the new Prince Trust Curator in Prints and Drawing–the curatorship previously held by Druick–effective immediately.

In making the appointments, Druick said: “Both Suzanne and Martha were members of the Department of Prints and Drawings when I arrived at the Art Institute in 1985. I have always admired and valued their expertise, intellectual rigor, and collegiality, and together we have shaped one of the most active and esteemed departments of its kind in any museum. I am thrilled to recognize Suzanne’s and Martha’s achievements with these appointments. This is a department very close to my heart, as it was my first home at the museum more than two decades ago, and I look forward to watching the department continue to flourish in the coming years.”

Suzanne Folds McCullagh began her career at the Art Institute in 1975 as a curatorial assistant while completing her Ph.D. from Harvard and after serving as the curatorial assistant in charge of prints at the Fogg Art Museum. She directed and co-authored the first comprehensive scholarly catalogue of the museum’s Italian drawings in 1997, Italian Drawings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago. In her decades at the museum, she has acquired some of the most significant works of art held by the Department of Prints and Drawings, particularly in the area of French and Italian drawings and pastels, including sheets by François Boucher and Maurice Quentin de La Tour and prints and copper plates by Rembrandt. She has also curated dozens of exhibitions–notably Rembrandt’s Journey and a companion show in 2004–and published prolifically on subjects ranging from Rembrandt to Gabriel de Saint-Aubin and from Marc Chagall to Chardin. A leading expert in the field of Old Master works on paper, she was most recently the curator of Drawn to Drawings: The Goldman Collection and Gray Collection: Seven Centuries of Art. McCullagh is now in the midst of preparing Capturing the Sublime: Italian Drawings of the Renaissance and Baroque, an exhibition that will open March 25, 2012.

Martha Tedeschi, who joined the Art Institute as an NEA Intern in 1982 and holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, has been the curator of such groundbreaking exhibitions as Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light and John Marin’s Watercolors: A Medium for Modernism, both of which were recognized for their contributions to the material history of the medium of watercolor. Martha’s extensive work on James McNeill Whistler and her close collaboration with colleagues in conservation and conservation science have made her one of the leading scholars in the field who has reframed our understanding of canonical modern artists. In acquisitions, she has built an outstanding collection of British works on paper for which the Art Institute is now internationally recognized. This year, Martha was awarded a fellowship from the Center for Curatorial Leadership, a New York-based professional development program that recognizes curators with a talent for and interest in positions of greater leadership within art museums. Martha currently serves as President of the Print Council of America.

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