Andria Derstine named AMAM director

Fol­low­ing a nation­wide search, Andria Der­s­tine — a mem­ber of the museum staff since 2006 — has been named the John G.W. Cowles Direc­tor of the Allen Memo­r­ial Art Museum (AMAM) at Ober­lin Col­lege. She will begin her tenure on June 15.

Der­s­tine first came to the AMAM in 2006 as the Cura­tor of West­ern Art, and was pro­moted to Cura­tor of Col­lec­tions and Cura­tor of Euro­pean & Amer­i­can Art in 2009.

Prior to the AMAM, she was an Andrew W. Mel­lon Fel­low and then assis­tant cura­tor in the Depart­ment of Euro­pean Art at the Detroit Insti­tute of Arts.

Der­s­tine earned her bac­calau­re­ate degree in his­tory and lit­er­a­ture at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity in 1991. She earned her master’s degree (1996) and doc­tor­ate (2004) at New York Uni­ver­sity and also holds a cer­tifi­cate from the Cen­ter for Cura­to­r­ial Lead­er­ship in part­ner­ship with Colum­bia University.

“I am absolutely delighted to have been offered the direc­tor­ship,” Der­s­tine said.

“I have a great love for the AMAM’s ency­clo­pe­dic col­lec­tion, dis­tin­guished his­tory, and record of seri­ous engage­ment with the Ober­lin Col­lege cur­ricu­lum. I look for­ward to work­ing with the museum’s tal­ented, ener­getic staff, and Ober­lin College’s fac­ulty and staff, to help the AMAM become ever more inte­gral to the Ober­lin stu­dent expe­ri­ence — while con­tin­u­ing to grow the col­lec­tion, put on chal­leng­ing exhi­bi­tions, and wel­come the gen­eral pub­lic to our many free pro­grams and events,” she said.

The museum will turn cel­e­brate its cen­ten­nial in 2017.

The suc­cess of the recent “Side by Side: Oberlin’s Mas­ter­works” exhi­bi­tions, in which high­lights of the AMAM’s col­lec­tion were seen at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum of Art in New York and the Phillips Col­lec­tion in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., along with show­ings of AMAM works in Cleve­land, can be in large part ascribed to Derstine.

A spe­cial­ist in 17th- and 18th-century French and Ital­ian paint­ing, she also has a num­ber of schol­arly pub­li­ca­tions to her credit includ­ing co-author of the recently pub­lished “Allen Memo­r­ial Art Museum: High­lights from the Collection.”

Posted by Scott Mahoney on May 10 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.