Cornelia H. "Connie" Butler (born 1 February 1963) is an American

museum curator A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...

, author, and art historian. Since 2013, Butler is the Chief Curator at the

Hammer Museum The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur- ...

in Los Angeles.

Career

Butler is a 1980 graduate of Marlborough School, and a 1984 graduate of

Scripps College Scripps College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Claremont, California. It was founded as a member of the Claremont Colleges in 1 ...

. From 2006 to 2013, she served as the Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Prior to that, she was a curator at the

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's o ...

(MOCA), from 1996 to 2006. Butler also held curatorial positions at the

Neuberger Museum of Art Neuberger Museum of Art is located in Purchase, New York, United States. It is affiliated with Purchase College, part of the State University of New York system. It is the nation's tenth-largest university museum. The museum is one of 14 sites o ...

Purchase, New York Purchase is a hamlet in the town and village of Harrison, in Westchester County, New York, United States. One myth explains that its name is derived from Harrison's purchase, where John Harrison was to be granted as much land as he could ride in ...

;

Artists Space Artists Space is a non-profit art gallery and arts organization first established at 155 Wooster Street in Soho, New York City. Founded in 1972 by Irving Sandler and Trudie Grace and funded by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Artist ...

; and the

Des Moines Arts Center The Des Moines Art Center is an art museum with an extensive collection of paintings, sculpture, modern art and mixed media. It was established in 1948 in Des Moines, Iowa. History The Art Center traces its roots to 1916, when the Des Moines A ...

. She was hired as curator of drawings for MoMA in October 2005, when she was still working on developing her ''WACK!'' project for MOCA. Her multimedia exhibition ''

WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution ''WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution'' was an exhibition of international women's art presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles from March 4–July 16, 2007. It later traveled to PS1 Contemporary Art Center, where it was on vie ...

'' dealt with international feminist art of the 1970s. The exhibit was shown at The Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in the summer of 2007. When curating ''WACK!'', reviewer Carolyn Stuart noted that Butler included works by 124 women artists, and several male collaborators, and also included several works of art "with little or no obvious feminist content", or works not described as feminist by their creators. She co-published a book about the exhibition in 2007. She was interviewed for the film ''

!Women Art Revolution ''!Women Art Revolution'' is a 2010 documentary film directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson and distributed by Zeitgeist Films. It tracks the feminist art movement over 40 years through interviews with artists, curators, critics, and historians. Synop ...

''. She co-authored the book ''From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard’s Numbers Shows 1969–74,'' which was published in 2013. In July 2013, she began overseeing the entirety of

's curatorial department, including "developing and organizing exhibitions, building the Hammer Contemporary Collection, and overseeing the Hammer’s artist residency program and artist council." In May 2014 at MoMA, she co-curated the first major

Lygia Clark Lygia Pimentel Lins (23 October 1920 – 25 April 1988), better known as Lygia Clark, was a Brazilian artist best known for her painting and installation work. She was often associated with the Brazilian Constructivist movements of the mid-20t ...

retrospective to be held in the US. Working for the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles as chief curator, in April 2016 she secured a donation of street photography by Daido Moriyama, the world's largest collection. In 2019, she curated an exhibit on

Lari Pittman Lari George Pittman (born 1952 in Glendale, California) is a Colombian-American contemporary artist and painter. Pittman is an Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Painting and Drawing at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. Early life ...

. In 2020, she was developing an exhibition on feminism called ''Witch Hunt.'' The release was pushed back to February 2021. She won the 2020 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence from CCS Bard (The Center for Curatorial Studies at

Bard College Bard College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic ...

Exhibitions

*2015: with

Jamillah James Jamillah James (born 1980) is an American curator. She is the Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Early life and education James grew up in New Jersey. Her mother was a musician. James's early interest in music and ...

, ''

Mark Bradford Mark Bradford (born November 20, 1961) is an American visual artist. Born in Los Angeles, Bradford studied at the California Institute of the Arts. Recognized for his collaged painting works, which have been shown internationally, his practice al ...

: Scorched Earth,'' Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California *2014: with Michael Ned Holte, ''Made in L.A. 2014'', Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California *2014: with Luis Pérez-Oramas, ''Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948-1988'', Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, New York *2012 to 2013: ''Alina Szapocznikow: Sculpture Undone, 1955–1972'', Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, New York *2010 to 2011: with

Catherine de Zegher Catherine de Zegher (born Marie-Catherine Alma Gladys de Zegher Groningen, April 14, 1955) is a Belgian curator and a modern and contemporary art historian. She has a degree in art history and archaeology from the University of Ghent. From 1988 t ...

, ''On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century'', Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, New York *2010: with

Klaus Biesenbach Klaus Biesenbach (born 1966)Erica Orden (December 26, 2009)Herr Zeitgeist''New York Magazine''. is a European American curator and the museum director. He is the Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie, with Berggruen Museum and Scharf-Gerstenberg Co ...

and Neville Wakefield, ''Greater New York'', MoMA P.S. 1, Long Island, New York *2009: ''Paul Sietsema'', Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, New York *2007: ''

,'' Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California

Publications

Books and exhibition catalogues

* Bradford, Mark, and Cornelia H. Butler. ''Scorched Earth: Mark Bradford.'' Los Angeles: Hammer Museum, 2015. * Butler, Cornelia H., Michael Ned Holte, and Judy Fiskin. ''Made in L.A. 2014.'' Los Angeles: Hammer Museum, 2014. * Butler, Cornelia H., Luis Pérez Oramas, Antonio Sergio Bessa, and Lygia Clark. ''Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948-1988.'' New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2014. * Butler, Cornelia H., Pip Day, and Peter Plagens. ''From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows, 1969-74.'' London: Afterall Books, 2012. * Butler, Cornelia and Alexandra Schwartz, eds. ''Modern Women: Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art.'' New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2010. * Butler, Cornelia H., and M. Catherine de Zegher. ''On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century.'' New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010. * Butler, Cornelia, Bruce Hainley, Nancy Grubb, and Paul Sietsema. ''Figure 3: Paul Sietsema.'' New York, NY: Museum of Modern Art, 2009. * Butler, Cornelia H., and Lisa Gabrielle Mark. ''WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution.'' Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007. * Rowell, Margit, and Cornelia H. Butler. ''Cotton Puffs, Q-Tips, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha.'' New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2004. * De Kooning, Willem, Cornelia H. Butler, and Paul Schimmel. ''Willem De Kooning: Tracing the Figure.'' Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2002. * Butler, Cornelia H., Weng Choy Lee, and Francis Pound. ''Flight Patterns: Laurence Aberhart ... Et Al.'' Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2000. * Butler, Cornelia H. ''Afterimage: Drawing Through Process.'' Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1999. * Butler, Cornelia H., and Jessica Bronson. ''Jessica Bronson.'' Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Arts, 1998. * Butler, Cornelia H. ''The Power of Suggestion: Narrative and Notation in Contemporary Drawing.'' Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1996. * Butler, Cornelia H., and Lucinda H. Gedeon. ''Inspired by Nature.'' Purchase, N.Y.: Neuberger Museum of Art, 1994. * Butler, Cornelia H. ''Iowa Artists 1988.'' Des Moines, Iowa: The Center, 1988.

Articles

* McCornack, Julia, and Connie Butler. "From Painting to Therapeutic Practice: Conversation about Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948-1988." ''X-Tra: Contemporary Art Quarterly'' 17, no. 1 (Fall 2014): 4-21. * Butler, Connie. "This Is Art--These People Are Artists: Pacific Standard Time, Conceptual Art, and Other Momentous Events from a Local Point of View." ''Art Journal'' 71, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 38-57. * Butler, Connie. "That's Guy de Cointet." ''Artforum International'' 45, no. 10 (Summer 2007): 418-421. * Butler, Connie. "Flight patterns." ''Art Journal'' 60, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 9-12. * Butler, Connie. "West of everything." ''Parkett'' no. 57 (January 3, 1999): 189-201. * Butler, Connie. "Rita McBride." ''Journal of Contemporary Art'' 7, (March 1995): 82-89. * Butler, Connie. "Queer space." ''Art & Text'' 49 (September 1994): 83-84.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Butler, Cornelia Living people American art curators American women curators People associated with the Museum of Modern Art (New York City) Scripps College alumni 1963 births Women art historians