The Mattress Factory, a recent artwork museum and residency program in Pittsburgh, has named Anthony Elms as its inventive director, starting subsequent February.
On the Mattress Manufacturing facility, Elms will oversee the establishment’s total inventive programming, from its exhibitions and commissions to its residency program to public engagement and interpretative methods. His appointment, after a nationwide search, comes because the museum prepares for its fiftieth anniversary in 2027.
“Anthony is the right match for this second on the Mattress Manufacturing facility,” David Oresick, the museum’s govt director, mentioned in an announcement. “His artist-first method, his deep expertise throughout the artwork world, and his historical past of manufacturing exhibitions that resonate extensively whereas remaining deeply attentive to the artists’ visions make him an distinctive addition to our workforce. We’re thrilled to welcome him and excited for the brand new vitality, care, and artistic ambition he’ll deliver to our program.”
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Elms has a confirmed monitor file in each the institutional and industrial sectors of the artwork world. Shortly after becoming a member of the Institute of Up to date Artwork, Philadelphia in 2011 as an affiliate curator, Elms was named a cocurator of the 2014 Whitney Biennial, the final iteration of the recurring exhibition in its former house, the Breuer Constructing. He organized that exhibition with artist Michelle Grabner and Stuart Comer, chief curator of media and efficiency artwork on the Museum of Fashionable Artwork. Every curator took over a ground of the Whitney, with Art in America describing Elms’s ground as “trump[ing] the opposite two curators together with his poetic use of empty house.”
Elms labored on the ICA Philadelphia till 2021, being promoted to its chief curator in 2015. On the ICA, he organized exhibitions Karyn Olivier, Cauleen Smith, Rodney McMillian, and Christopher Knowles, amongst others.
After leaving the ICA, he joined the New York–based mostly gallery Peter Freeman, Inc., as a director in 2022, the place he was equally chargeable for mounting exhibitions and making personal gross sales. On the time, he was a part of a growing trend of museum curators becoming a member of industrial galleries. “It was this specific gallery,” he advised ARTnews on the tie. “I’ve all the time had a love of artists from Japanese Europe, in order that materials me.”
Elms departed Peter Freeman final yr and has continued to work as an unbiased curator. He just lately organized a solo exhibition for McMillian on the Henry Artwork Gallery in Seattle, which is on view by means of subsequent Could.
“Mattress Manufacturing facility’s dedication to supporting artists is the center of its historical past and mission,” Elms mentioned in an announcement. “Artists problem our definitions of artwork, figuring out its objective, its potentialities, its values. For almost fifty years, the Mattress Manufacturing facility has given artists the house and help to discover these questions on their very own phrases. I’m honored by the invitation to share on this difficult work with Pittsburgh and past.”
