Mohamed Lachemi, provost and vice president academic at Ryerson University, announced the appointment of Paul Roth as the new director of the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC). The appointment is for a five-year term beginning autumn 2013.
Paul Roth brings to the Ryerson Image Centre more than 25 years experience with some of the most important photography collections in North America. Most recently, he was senior curator and director of photography and media arts at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., where he served two tenures in different capacities over 16 years. He has held positions at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and at the Center for Creative Photography in Arizona. Roth also served as executive director of The Richard Avedon Foundation in New York, where he led one of the most successful single-artist photography auctions in history.
At the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Roth organized and co-organized such major exhibitions as Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power (2008), and Sally Mann: What Remains (2004), and, at the National Gallery of Art, I…Dreaming: The Visionary Cinema of Stan Brakhage (2002). Since 1990, he has helped realize more than 70 museum exhibitions and film programs. He is the author of numerous books and monographs, including, most recently, the five-volume survey Gordon Parks: Collected Works (2012) and War Games: David Levinthal (2013). In addition, Roth has helped organize the archives of photographers as Robert Frank, Richard Avedon, Garry Winogrand, and Edward Weston.
Roth is well acquainted with the RIC, its mission, staff and affiliated faculty. In 2009, he worked with photographer and Ryerson alumnae Edward Burtynsky to exhibit and publish his series Oil at the Corcoran, in an exhibition and monograph that received international honours. Two years later, he participated in the RIC’s Burtynsky symposium on the occasion of that show’s 2011 Toronto co- presentation by Ryerson Image Centre and the Royal Ontario Museum. More recently, he has served as a project research fellow studying the Black Star Collection’s holdings documenting the legendary Vietnam War protests at Chicago’s 1968 Democratic National Convention. He has followed the construction of the Image Arts Building and the development of the Ryerson Image Centre’s collections and exhibition program.
The public can find more details, and subscribe to the Ryerson Image Centre email newsletter, at www.ryerson.ca/ric