New Staff: Katherine Bussard, Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography

Katherine Bussard recently joined the Museum as the Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography. Only the second to hold this endowed curatorship since it was named in honor of Bunnell, Katherine will be responsible for developing special exhibitions ranging from ambitious international touring projects to smaller, more focused exhibitions; organizing changing installations for the collections galleries; developing public education programs, including lectures, artists’ residencies, colloquia, and symposia; researching and overseeing the care and conservation of the Museum’s photographic holdings; and formulating a collecting strategy as well as securing significant new acquisitions for the photography collection through both gifts and purchases.

Most recently, Katherine was associate curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago. She received a B.A. from Smith College, earned her M.A. from Williams College, and was awarded a Ph.D. in art history from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, where she wrote her dissertation on street photography. That scholarship is the subject of a forthcoming book from Yale University Press and has been awarded two prestigious publication grants, one from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Fund of the College Art Association and the other from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Since 1999, Katherine has curated more than twenty exhibitions, including Film and Photo in New York (2012); Souvenirs of the Barbizon: Photographs, Paintings, and Works on Paper (2011); and a biennial series dedicated to emerging photographers (2005–2011). Katherine recently coedited the book Color Rush: American Color Photography from Stieglitz to Sherman, which accompanied an exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum. She is currently working on a major exhibition operating at the intersection of photography, architecture, and urban studies, entitled The City Dynamic: Representing Crisis and Renewal in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles 1960–1980, co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Princeton University Art Museum.