New American Art Curator named at San Antonio Muse

SAN ANTONIO, Oct. 29, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The San Antonio Museum of Art is pleased to announce the hiring of William Rudolph in a newly created position as the Marie and Hugh Halff Curator of American Art and Mellon Chief Curator. The position is being supported by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and endowed by local San Antonian philanthropist Marie Halff, in honor of her late husband.

Dr. Rudolph will begin his tenure at the San Antonio Museum of Art in December. He is currently the Constance and Dudley J. Godfrey, Jr. Curator of American Art and Decorative Arts and Director of Exhibitions at the Milwaukee Art Museum. He is co-curator of the recently opened exhibition there, "Thomas Sully: Painted Performance," a major retrospective of the 19th-century Philadelphia artist Thomas Sully, which, coincidentally, is scheduled to travel to the San Antonio Museum of Art (February 8-May 11, 2014).

"The San Antonio Museum of Art is an ambitious museum," said Dr. Rudolph. "I'm excited to work with Katie Luber and her team to bring dynamic art and programming to the city's diverse community, to the south Texas and Hill Country regions and to the 28 million annual visitors who fall in love with this marvelous city's rich history and culture."

Dr. Rudolph previously served as Curator of American Art at the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, MA, and the Pauline Gill Sullivan Associate Curator of American Art at the Dallas Museum of Art. He received his master's degree in art history from the University of Virginia and his doctorate in art history from Bryn Mawr College. His dissertation was on Jean-Joseph Vaudechamp, a 19th-century portraitist who commuted between Paris and New Orleans in the 1830s. Dr. Rudolph also completed both the Royal Collections Studies program and the Attingham Summer School for the Study of Country Houses and Collections, both in Great Britain.

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The American art collection of the San Antonio Museum of Art consists of 1500 works, among them paintings by John Singleton Copley, Marsden Hartley, Andrew Wyeth and Thomas Sully. The Museum currently employs five curators for its collections: Ancient Art of the Mediterranean, Asian, Contemporary, Latin American and European.

The San Antonio Museum of Art is housed in the historic Lone Star Brewery on the Museum Reach of the San Antonio Riverwalk. The collection contains more than 25,000 works representing 5,000 years of history and cultures from around the world.

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Tatiana Herrera Schneider (210) 978-8107