Princeton University Art Museum Names Katherine A. Bussard the New Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography

PRINCETON, NJ – The Princeton University Art Museum is pleased to announce that Katherine A. Bussard will join the Museum staff as the Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography, beginning April 15, 2013 – only the second to hold this endowed curatorship since it was named in honor of Bunnell. Bussard 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, artist's residencies, colloquia, and symposia; researching and overseeing the care and conservation of the Museum's photographic holdings; as well as formulating a collecting strategy and securing significant new acquisitions for the photography collection through both gifts and purchases.

Bussard is currently Associate Curator of Photography at The Art Institute of Chicago, whose staff she joined in 2004. She received a B.A. from Smith College, undertook postgraduate studies at Williams College, where she earned her M.A., 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.

“Kate Bussard is wonderfully placed to be the second Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography at Princeton,” noted Museum Director James Steward, “as both an intellectually gifted scholar and a curator with dynamic ideas about how to continue to study the photograph in a time of great change. We’re delighted to welcome her to Princeton, where she will continue a legacy of leadership in the field.”

Since 1999, Bussard has curated over 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). Bussard coedited the book Color Rush: American Color Photography from Stieglitz to Sherman, which will accompany an exhibition opening at the Milwaukee Art Museum next month. She is currently working on a major project 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.

The photography collection at Princeton is one of the leading museum collections in the country. Now numbering over 27,000 objects, the collection had its origins at Princeton in 1971, when David Hunter McAlpin, Class of 1920, and Mrs. McAlpin donated their personal collection of nearly 500 photographs in 1971, including works by Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock, Imogen Cunningham, Charles Sheeler, and Edward Weston. Since then the collection has grown to form a comprehensive history of the medium from the 1840s to the present, including the archives of Minor White, Clarence H. White and the Clarence H. White School of Photography, Ruth Bernhard, and William B. Dyer.

Peter C. Bunnell, for whom the photography curatorship was named in 2011, is the McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art Emeritus at Princeton University. Prior to coming to the University in 1972, he was curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He held a similar curatorship during his thirty years at Princeton, where he was responsible for securing for Princeton the Clarence White collection and the Minor White archive.

Please direct image requests and general inquiries to Erin Firestone, ph: 609.258.3767; ef4@princeton.edu.

About the Princeton University Art Museum

Founded in 1882, the Princeton University Art Museum is one of the leading university art museums in the country, with collections of more than 72,000 works of art that range from ancient to contemporary art and concentrate geographically on the Mediterranean regions, Western Europe, China, the United States, and Latin America.

Committed to advancing Princeton’s teaching and research missions, the Art Museum serves as a gateway to the University for visitors from around the world. The Museum is intimate in scale yet expansive in scope, offering a respite from the rush of daily life, a revitalizing experience of extraordinary works of art, and an opportunity to delve deeply into the study of art and culture.

The Princeton University Art Museum is located at the heart of the Princeton campus, a short walk from the shops and restaurants of Nassau Street. Admission is free. Museum hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.; and Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. The Museum is closed Mondays and major holidays.

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