John B. Ravenal (born August 1, 1959 in Providence, Rhode Island) is an art historian, writer, and museum curator. Before 1998, he was the Associate Curator of 20th-Century Art at the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

. From 1998 to 2015 he was curator of contemporary art at the

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, or VMFA, is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, United States, which opened in 1936. The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the su ...

Richmond, Virginia (Thus do we reach the stars) , image_map = , mapsize = 250 px , map_caption = Location within Virginia , pushpin_map = Virginia#USA , pushpin_label = Richmond , pushpin_m ...

, where he organized exhibitions of

Ryan McGinness Ryan Joseph McGinness (born January 9, 1972) is an American artist, living and working in Manhattan, New York. Known for his original extensive vocabulary of graphic drawings which use the visual language of public signage, corporate logos, ...

: ''Studio Visit'' (2014);

Xu Bing Xu Bing (; born 1955) is a Chinese artist who served as vice-president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He is known for his printmaking skills and installation art, as well as his creative artistic use of language, words, and text and how t ...

: ''Tobacco Project''(2011), and

Sally Mann Sally Mann HonFRPS (born Sally Turner Munger; May 1, 1951) is an American photographer who has made large format black and white photographs—at first of her young children, then later of landscapes suggesting decay and death. Early life and e ...

: ''The Flesh and The Spirit'' (2010). He was curator of the

VMFA The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, or VMFA, is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, United States, which opened in 1936. The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the s ...

Jasper Johns Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker whose work is associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art. He is well known for his depictions of the American flag and other US-related top ...

and

Edvard Munch Edvard Munch ( , ; 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter. His best known work, ''The Scream'' (1893), has become one of Western art's most iconic images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dr ...

exhibition, ''Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch: Love, Loss, and the Cycle of Life''. His lecture about the exhibition took place in the Leslie Cheek Theater in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The show opened in November 2016 in partnership with the

Munch Museum Munch Museum ( no, Munch-museet), marketed as Munch (stylised as MUNCH) since 2020, is an art museum in Bjørvika, Oslo, Norway dedicated to the life and works of the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. The museum was originally located at Tøyen, ...

in Oslo. He is the author of the exhibition catalogue ''Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch: Inspiration and Transformation.''

Education

Ravenal earned his BA in art history from

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...

and his Master of Arts and Master of Philosophy degrees in art history from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

Professional activities

His exhibitions for the

included commissioned projects by

Sherrie Levine Sherrie Levine (born 1947) is an American photographer, painter, and Conceptual art, conceptual artist. Some of her work consists of exact photographic reproductions of the work of other photographers such as Walker Evans, Eliot Porter and Edward ...

Lawrence Weiner Lawrence Charles Weiner (February 10, 1942December 2, 2021) was an American conceptual artist. He was one of the central figures in the formation of conceptual art in the 1960s. His work often took the form of typographic texts, a form of word a ...

, Richard Long, and

Rirkrit Tiravanija Rirkrit Tiravanija ( th, ฤกษ์ฤทธิ์ ตีระวนิช, pronunciation: [] or Tea-rah-vah-nitJerry Saltz (May 7, 2007)Conspicuous Consumption''New York Magazine''.) is a Thai contemporary artist residing in New York City, Be ...

; a retrospective of the art of Sidney Goodman; and the first United States museum exhibition by Scottish artist

Ian Hamilton Finlay Ian Hamilton Finlay, CBE (28 October 1925 – 27 March 2006) was a Scottish poet, writer, artist and gardener. Life Finlay was born in Nassau, Bahamas, to James Hamilton Finlay and his wife, Annie Pettigrew, both of Scots descent. He was ...

. He returned to the VMFA for the Johns/Munch exhibition, presenting a lecture about mutual motifs in the works of the two artists, which was preceded by a performance by Norwegian pianist Else Olsen Storesund of the

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...

composition, ''Perilous Night''. While at the

, where he was the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, he was a speaker at art6 Gallery in

Richmond, Virginia (Thus do we reach the stars) , image_map = , mapsize = 250 px , map_caption = Location within Virginia , pushpin_map = Virginia#USA , pushpin_label = Richmond , pushpin_m ...

in the lecture series honoring

curator Pinkney Near. Also while at the VMFA, Ravenal’s exhibitions included ''Vanitas: Meditations on Life and Death in Contemporary Art''; ''Outer & Inner Space'', a history of

video art Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting ...

; Robert Lazzarini’s first solo museum exhibition; and ''Artificial Light'', displayed at

VCUarts Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts (also referred to as VCU School of the Arts or simply VCUarts) is a public non-profit art and design school located in Richmond, Virginia. One of many degree-offering schools at VCU, the Schoo ...

Anderson Gallery and the

Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) is a collecting museum located in North Miami, Florida. The building was designed by the architecture firm Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, New York City. History The Museum of Contemporary Art began ...

. During his tenure at the VMFA, the museum acquired the

Kehinde Wiley Kehinde Wiley (born February 28, 1977)"Kehinde Wiley"
''Artnet''. Retrieved October 13, 2010. i ...

painting "Willem van Heythuysen". Ravenal served as the fourth president of the

Association of Art Museum Curators The Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) was founded in New York in 2001 to support the role of curators in shaping the mission of art museums in North America. History The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts was founded in 179 ...

(2009–11). In 2015 Ravenal became executive director of the

DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is a 30-acre sculpture park and contemporary art museum on the shore of Flint's Pond in Lincoln, Massachusetts, 20 miles northwest of Boston. It was established in 1950. It is the largest park of its kind ...

Lincoln, Massachusetts Lincoln is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. The population was 7,014 according to the 2020 United States Census, including residents of Hanscom Air Force Base that live within town limits. The town, located in the MetroWest region o ...

. His appointment to DeCordova as Executive Director was announced by the Center for Curatorial Leadership, of which he had been a Fellow since 2012. He served in this position until 2020. Ravenal has contributed to exhibition catalogues and essays about the artist

Sol LeWitt Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism. LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he pref ...

and other contemporary artists. He worked on the TV series documentary ''Art in the Twenty-First Century'' (2001) and the biographical documentary, ''Herb & Dorothy 50X50'' (2013).

Bibliography

* Sally Mann: The Flesh and the Spirit by John B. Ravenal, John Ravenal, Sally Mann (Photographer). * Modern & Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. * Vanitas: Meditations On Life And Death In Contemporary Art * Outer and Inner Space: Pipilotti Rist, Shirin Neshat, Jane and Louise Wilson, and the History of Video Art by John B. Ravenal, Laura Cottingham, Jonathan Crary * Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch: Inspiration and Transformation * The Alumni Show II: Wesleyan University * Artificial Light: New Light-Based Sculpture and Installation Art by John B. Ravenal, Kathleen Forde * Twenty Philadelphia Artists: Celebrating Fleisher Challenge At Twenty * Sidney Goodman: Paintings And Drawings, 1959-95

Biography

John Ravenal is the husband of writer Virginia Pye, the author of ''River of Dust'' and ''Dreams of the Red Phoenix''. They have two children, Eva and Daniel.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ravenal, John 1959 births Living people American art historians American art curators Wesleyan University alumni Columbia University alumni People associated with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts