STEPHEN SMITH/ART ZEALOUS/COURTESY AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM
After 34 years at the American Folk Art Museum in New York, deputy director of curatorial affairs, chief curator, and director of exhibitions Stacy C. Hollander will step down at the end of June. The museum said in a news release that Hollander, who served as interim director of the museum last year, is departing “to pursue independent curatorial work and writing projects.”
Hollander has organized more than 50 exhibitions at the museum, including “Ammi Phillips/Mark Rothko Compositions in Pink, Green, and Red” (in 2008), “Women Only” (2011), “Self-Taught Genius” (with Valérie Rousseau, 2013–16), “Securing the Shadow: Posthumous Portraiture in America” (2016), and “Charting the Divine Plan: The Art of Orra White Hitchcock (2018).
AFAM’s director, Jason T. Busch, said in a statement that Hollander “is a curator with deep knowledge and boundless curiosity; her exhibitions have been critical in establishing the American Folk Art Museum as the leading institution of self-taught art.”
The museum noted that hundreds of work entered its collection during Hollander’s tenure, including pieces by Sheldon Peck, Joseph Whiting Stock, William Matthew Prior, and many more.
“Stacy has been a mainstay of AFAM for decades,” Monty Blanchard, the president of the museum’s board of trustees, said in a statement. “We are most fortunate to have benefited from her exceptional curatorial creativity, scholarship, diligence, and taste.”