SOUTH HADLEY – A woman with more than two decades of experience in the art world has been named director of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum.
Tricia Y. Paik, who currently works as curator of contemporary art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, was selected after a national search by school professors, administrators and museum board members. She will start Nov. 30, succeeding John Stomberg.
Paik’s responsibilities will include leading and planning programs, directing daily operations and increasing faculty engagement with the museum’s Teaching with Art program. She will also oversee acquisitions, fundraising and new community engagement initiatives.
Jon Western, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty, said he is delighted that Paik has accepted the position. He praised her experience in modern and contemporary art and spoke about her “vision” and “talent” to involve the community with the museum and to meld the arts and the curriculum at Mount Holyoke.
Curating over 30 exhibitions and installations, Paik’s career has included work in New York City and Midwest museums.
Among those, she oversaw the new contemporary collection galleries unveiled as part of the Saint Lous Art Museum expansion in 2013. A leading scholar on the art of Ellsworth Kelly, Paik is the main author of a 2015 Phaidon Press survey of Kelly’s life and career. At the Saint Louis Art Museum, she co-curated a commission by Andy Goldsworthy.
Paik graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in English and art history from Dartmouth College and has a master’s degree and doctorate from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.
“I view myself first and foremost as an art historian,” Paik said. “I have always focused on making contemporary art understood in the context of the past – all art was once contemporary.”
She looks forward to beginning work at the Mount Holyoke museum, which is among the nation’s oldest academic art museums.
It has been collecting contemporary art since its 1876 founding. There are already more than two dozen disciplines within the school that use the museum in their classes. This fall, the museum will celebrate its 140th anniversary.
Paik said she is thrilled to continue shaping that legacy.
“I want to build on the great strengths that the museum already has,” she said. “I want to make it a welcoming space for people to come together, whether students, faculty or those from neighboring communities.”
Sarah Crosby can be reached at scrosby@gazettenet.com.