David Norr Named Senior Curator of Exhibitions

Columbus, OH—David Norr will be senior curator of exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts effective mid-March, 2014. Norr is currently chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland.

Notes Wexner Center Director Sherri Geldin, “David brings with him a wealth of experience—first as an artist, then a professor, and ultimately a curator of contemporary art, both at a major public university and a ‘freestanding’ museum. He has a deep appreciation for the artistic process, for the integration of the arts into an academic setting, and for rigorous exhibition-making. David also recognizes and welcomes the special opportunities inherent in a place like the Wex, where a commitment to the creation of new work matches the commitment to presentation, interpretation, and public engagement.”

“It’s a thrill to consider the possibilities of curating at the Wexner Center,” says Norr. “Their one-of-a-kind role as an incubator of established and emerging artists presents a multitude of challenges and opportunities to not only engage with their home base at The Ohio State University and Columbus, but on the national and international level as well. I’m eager to dive in and get started and work with this forward-thinking group of people.”

As senior curator, Norr will work closely with Geldin and the center’s exhibitions team to help shape and realize a vital and rigorous exhibitions program, collaborate on cross-disciplinary programs within the center and across the university, identify visual arts residency award recipients, and cultivate an avid audience for the center’s exhibitions and related initiatives.

As chief curator at MOCA Cleveland, Norr organized such exhibitions as Michelle Grabner: I Work From Home, a twenty-year survey of the artist’s work; Kate Gilmore: Body of Work; Corin Hewitt: The Hedge; Janet Cardiff and George Buress Miller: Paradise Institute; David Almejd: The Orbit; and the inaugural show for the center’s new building, Inside Out and From the Ground Up. He spent five years with the Institute for Research in Art/Contemporary Art Museum at the University of South Florida, Tampa and has lectured and published consistently over the last decade.

Norr, a Cleveland-area native, earned a B.F.A. in studio art from the University of Colorado at Boulder and an M.F.A. in sculpture from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia.