Anne Pasternak (born 1964) is a curator and museum director. She is the current Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

Education

Pasternak was born in

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

and received her undergraduate degree in Art History and Business Management from the

University of Massachusetts, Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, i ...

. She went on to take graduate courses at

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...

but left without taking a degree. Pasternak has been awarded honorary doctorates from

Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was ...

and

Career

Pasternak's career began with an internship turned directorship at the Stux Gallery in Boston in the 1980s. She then served as Curator at

Real Art Ways Real Art Ways is a non-profit art space established in 1975. Located at 56 Arbor Street in the Parkville neighborhood of Hartford, Connecticut, Real Art Ways exhibits visual art, houses an independent cinema and presents live music, theater, and ...

, an arts nonprofit in Hartford, Connecticut. She curated public art projects with such now acclaimed artists as

Mel Chin Mel Chin (born 1951 in Houston, Texas, USA) is a conceptual art, conceptual visual artist. Motivated largely by political, cultural, and social circumstances, Chin works in a variety of art media to calculate meaning in modern life. Chin places art ...

and

Mark Dion Mark Dion (born August 28, 1961) is an American conceptual artist best known for his use of scientific presentations in his installations. His work examines the manner in which prevalent ideologies and institutions influence our understanding ...

as well as the groundbreaking exhibition "Hip Hop Nation".

Creative Time

In 1993 Anne Pasternak left Real Art Ways and became the Executive Director of

Creative Time Creative Time is a New York-based nonprofit arts organization. It was founded in 1974 to support the creation of innovative, site-specific, socially engaged artworks in the public realm, particularly in vacant spaces of historical and architectura ...

. There she curated and organized numerous exhibitions, events, discussions, and public art projects including the annual "

Tribute In Light The ''Tribute in Light'' is an art installation created in remembrance of the September 11 attacks. It consists of 88 vertical searchlights arranged in two columns of light to represent the Twin Towers. It stands six blocks south of the Worl ...

" memorial honoring the lives lost on September 11, 2001; Paul Chan's ''Waiting for Godot'' in Post-Katrina New Orleans, and

Kara Walker Kara Elizabeth Walker (born November 26, 1969) is an American contemporary painter, silhouettist, print-maker, installation artist, filmmaker, and professor who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work. She is best k ...

's ''A Subtlety'' in Brooklyn's

Domino Sugar Factory The Domino Sugar Refinery is a mixed-use development and former sugar refinery in the neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York City, along the East River. When active as a refinery, it was operated by the Havemeyer family's America ...

in the Williamsburg neighborhood.

Brooklyn Museum

In 2015, Pasternak left Creative Time and replaced Arnold L. Lehman as the director of the

. Pasternak's directorship at the Brooklyn Museum marks the first time a woman has kept a directing role in an encyclopedic New York museum. As a former director of a public art organization, this new position represents a shift in her career from a broader public sphere into the architecture of a museum. Her portrait is included in the series of Female Museum Art Director by artist Amy Chaiklinbr>

Awards and recognition

*Ufficiale dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia, 2018 *Crains 50 Most Powerful Women in New York, 2019

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pasternak, Anne Living people Brooklyn Museum American art curators American women curators 1964 births University of Massachusetts Amherst alumni 21st-century American women