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Virginia Commonwealth University Appoints Director for New Institute for Contemporary Art

Virginia Commonwealth University announced the appointment of Lisa Freiman, Ph.D., currently the senior curator and chair of the contemporary art department at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, as inaugural director of the new VCU Institute for Contemporary Art.

In addition to her role as director of the ICA, Freiman, who begins July 1, also will be a professor in VCU’s acclaimed School of the Arts.

The ICA, anticipated to open in 2015, will be a combination exhibition and performance space, laboratory and incubator featuring a series of flexible programming spaces for the presentation of visual art, theater, music, dance and film by nationally and internationally recognized artists in a building designed by Steven Holl Architects. It will be a non-collecting institution designed to accommodate the increasing lack of barriers among different media and practices, mirroring the cross-disciplinary approach at the VCU School of the Arts.

Freiman is an internationally recognized curator and leader in the contemporary art field. She transformed the experience of contemporary art during her 10 years in Indianapolis, creating a dynamic and widely renowned contemporary art program that has become an influential model for encyclopedic museums as they engage with the art of our time.

Actively seeking out the works of emerging and established international artists, Freiman has provided a platform to support artists’ work through major traveling exhibitions, commissions, acquisitions, and publications. During her tenure, Freiman also helped raise more than $10 million to support contemporary exhibitions, programs, collection development, scholarship and other initiatives at the IMA.

For more, see www.vcu.edu.