Ian Gillingham of the Portland Art Museum just announced that PAM's getting a new curator of modern and contemporary art. Sara Krajewski, previously of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, will fill the role vacated by Bruce Guenther, who retired last year after 14 years with the museum. Her first day is August 31.

From PAM's press release:

Krajewski was most recently the director of the INOVA (Institute of Visual Arts) galleries at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she had served since 2012. Previously, she was curator at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, Wash., and she held curatorial positions at Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and Harvard University Art Museum. She earned her undergraduate degree in art history at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her master’s degree in art history at Williams College. Her research on transdisciplinary art and performance has been supported by an Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Fellowship.

It continues:

Over the course of eight years at the University of Washington's Henry Art Gallery, Krajewski organized nearly 40 exhibitions of contemporary art and photography, including the traveling exhibition Image Transfer: Pictures in a Remix Culture. She has strong ties to the artistic community of the Pacific Northwest and Vancouver, B.C., curating several projects with artists from the region including SuttonBeresCuller and Isabelle Pauwels. Krajewski's capstone exhibition at the Henry was Like a Valentine: The Art of Jeffry Mitchell, a survey of the Seattle-based artist's career.

During her tenure at the INOVA, Krajewski expanded the gallery's focus on interdisciplinary art forms, film and video installation, and performance, organized group exhibitions exploring topical issues such as environmental change, and commissioned artists such as Mateo Tannatt and Natalie Jeremijenko to create new works. She emphasized connecting the gallery to the University community, facilitating the creation of new works across disciplines and placing artistic research into broader dialogues of social and cultural importance. In 2014, Krajewski was recognized as an emerging leader by the Leadership Institute of the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries.

Krajewski's ties to the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle are a good sign of things to come here in Portland. The Henry has historically been a reliably good, accessible spot to see contemporary art (off-topic: the Henry recently reversed their by-donation admission policy, much to my chagrin). PAM's recent show, Gods and Heroes, is about as classical as you can get. I'm looking forward to seeing how their contemporary offerings shift under Krajewski's curatorial eye.