Dr. Keely Orgeman has been appointed the Seymour H. Knox, Jr., Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Yale University Art Gallery. She assumed her new position on December 2, 2019. Having served the Gallery for 11 years, she was most recently the Alice and Allan Kaplan Associate Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture. During her tenure at Yale, Orgeman organized the critically acclaimed 2017 exhibition Lumia: Thomas Wilfred and the Art of Light at the Gallery, which traveled to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, in Washington, D.C. Orgeman completed her doctorate at Boston University, where she curated the exhibition Atomic Afterimage: Cold War Imagery in Contemporary Art for the BU Art Gallery in 2008.
Dr. Orgeman will oversee the Gallery’s collection of modern and contemporary art, which is particularly strong in avant-garde artworks from 1920 to 1940 represented in the Société Anonyme Collection, as well as an outstanding collection of mid-20th-century American paintings. “We are thrilled to welcome Keely as the Gallery’s new Seymour H. Knox, Jr., Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art,” said Stephanie Wiles, the Henry J. Heinz II Director. “In addition to her significant experience and expertise in 20th-century American art and deep knowledge of the Gallery’s modern and contemporary collection, she is committed to supporting the visual arts within the New Haven community and is actively mentoring curatorial fellows at NXTHVN, a New Haven–based arts incubator cofounded by the artist Titus Kaphar, M.F.A. 2006.
About the Yale University Art Gallery
The Yale University Art Gallery, the oldest college art museum in the United States, was founded in 1832 when the patriot-artist John Trumbull gave more than 100 of his paintings to Yale College. Since then its collections have grown to more than 250,000 objects ranging in date from ancient times to the present. The collection of modern and contemporary art at the Gallery is noteworthy for exemplary works from the 20th century and the early years of the 21st century.