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The Utah Museum of Fine Arts has a new curator for some of its major art collections.
Leslie Anderson-Perkins has joined UMFA's staff as the museum's new curator of European, American and regional art.
Anderson-Perkins most recently worked at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, where she was curatorial assistant for European and American painting, sculpture and works on paper. Her specialty is Scandinavian art, but she has lectured on a variety of topics related to 19th- and 20th-century European and American art.
In a statement, UMFA executive director Gretchen Dietrich called Anderson-Perkins "an incredibly smart and talented curator whose depth of scholarship, passion for research and curatorial creativity will be invaluable as she brings a fresh eye to these important collections and plans new ways of presenting them to our visitors."
Anderson-Perkins said she was "elated" to join the UMFA staff. "I am especially looking forward to working with colleagues to identify new narratives and connections among objects in this fine permanent collection, and to helping visitors engage in fresh ways with these important works of art," she said.
European and American art, and art of Utah and the American West, are a major part of the 21,000 objects in UMFA's permanent collection. Anderson-Perkins' tasks include developing new permanent collection exhibitions and participating in two new grant-funded projects: To consult with the museum's collections staff and an external conservator as they assess conservation needs for its European paintings (funded by a 2015 National Endowment of the Arts "Art Works" grant), and to work with museum educators and a Kress Interpretive Fellow (still to be named) to create educational, interpretive and curricular materials about the European collection.
Anderson-Perkins joins UMFA's curatorial team, which includes Whitney Tassie (modern and contemporary art) and Luke Kelly (antiquities).