(June 30, 1999)—Philippe de Montebello, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today four promotions and two new appointments to the Museum's curatorial staff, all effective July 1 with the start of the next fiscal year.
The promotions include: Helen C. Evans to Curator of Medieval Art, J. Kenneth Moore to Frederick P. Rose Associate Curator in Charge of Musical Instruments, Perrin Stein to Associate Curator of Drawings and Prints, and Eric P. Kjellgren to Assistant Curator of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.
New to the Museum are Christopher Sherwin Lightfoot as Associate Curator of Greek and Roman Art, and Michiel Christiaan Plomp as Associate Curator of Northern Drawings.
In making the announcement, Mr. de Montebello said: "These changes, which affect six different areas of the Museum, will significantly strengthen the curatorial ranks of the Metropolitan and enhance our capabilities to provide significant and broad-reaching research, exhibitions, and publications. Four of these appointments recognize the achievements of curators already on our staff, while the other two bring in talented individuals from outside the Metropolitan."
Helen C. Evans
Helen Evans has been involved with the Metropolitan Museum since 1986. Initially a fellow and a sabbatical replacement in the Department of Medieval Art, she served as Assistant Curator from 1991 to 1995, and then as Associate Curator, in charge
of the early Christian and Byzantine collections.
Noted Mr. de Montebello: "The stellar work of Helen Evans over several years at the Metropolitan — as a curator, researcher, and author — has been epitomized to date by her work as co-curator of the major exhibition The Glory of Byzantium in 1997. Her current project of the reinstallation of the Byzantine galleries will undoubtedly be the first of many as a full Curator in which she will distinguish herself further."
Dr. Evans received her B.A. from Tulane University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, with her dissertation on "Manuscript Illumination at the Armenian Patriarchate in Hromkla and the West." She has lectured and published widely on the cross-cultural currents in the development of Christian art, its style and iconography. She was a curator of the exhibition Textiles of Late Antiquity at the Metropolitan Museum in 1996 and a co-curator of Treasures in Heaven: Armenian Illuminated Manuscripts at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City and the Walters Gallery of Art in Baltimore in 1994.
Dr. Evans, who is a resident of Manhattan, has been a major contributor to the catalogues published in association with these exhibitions and wrote the essays on "The Neighbors of Byzantium" and "Armenia" for the catalogue The Glory of Byzantium.
J. Kenneth Moore
Ken Moore, who has been Associate Curator & Administrator in the Department of Musical Instruments at the Metropolitan since 1997, began his career at the Museum in 1970, working first as a Security guard, then as the on-site coordinator of photography for the catalogue Treasures of the Kremlin Armory. He moved to the Department of Musical Instruments in 1979, where he was Curatorial Assistant, then Assistant Curator (1983) and Associate Curator (1990). Since 1990, he has been responsible for the curatorial care and display of the Museum's 3,700 non-Western instruments, as well as the organization of many lectures, demonstrations, and concert programs.
"The new title of Frederick P. Rose Associate Curator in Charge of Musical Instruments brings to Ken Moore not only our formal recognition of the many exhibitions and programs with which he has distinguished himself over the years, but also an acknowledgment of his administrative strengths," said Mr. de Montebello. "He will take charge of the oversight of the Department of Musical Instruments at a time when Laurence Libin, who has served so ably as head of the department for many years, chooses to devote himself to research and writing in his new position of Research Curator."
As resident ethnomusicologist at the Metropolitan Museum, Ken Moore has set standards in organology (the study of musical instruments) by advocating the application of contextual display methods of non-European instruments, for developing educational performance programs that emphasize world music cultures, and for devising descriptive cataloguing methodology. Outside the Metropolitan, he has made pioneering studies of the music of the Snake Handler cult in West Virginia, has served on the boards of the American Musical Instrument Society and the Society for Asian Music (Secretary and Concert Co-ordinator), and has been a member of the Council for the Society of Ethnomusicology, of which he was president of the mid-Atlantic chapter (1988-89).
As curator, his most recent exhibitions have been Enduring Rhythms: African Musical Instruments and the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum (1996-97) and Cultural Crossings: Ritual Soundings at the Newark Museum (1997). He has also served as consultant for many exhibitions and installations, including the traveling exhibition Sounding Forms: African Musical Instruments. He has also composed music for the 1996 off-Broadway production of The Wilde Spirit, and has worked as a musical arranger and transcriber. Recently, he has been working with children at the Special Music School of America.
Ken Moore, who lives in Manhattan, holds a B.S. in Music Education from Concord College (Athens, West Virginia) and an M.A. in Ethnomusicology from Hunter College in New York City. He is a doctoral candidate in music at the City University of New York.
Perrin Stein
Perrin Stein, who on July 1 becomes Associate Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints, specializes in the area of French drawings and prints before 1800. Since 1995, she has been an Assistant Curator in the department.
A magna cum laude graduate of Amherst College who received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University (with her dissertation on "Exoticism as Metaphor: Turquerie in 18th-century France"), Dr. Stein began her museum career in the European Paintings Department at the Metropolitan Museum in 1986, as a part-time researcher for the exhibition Degas. From 1988 to 1989 she was a Curatorial Intern working on the exhibitions Canaletto and Views of Venice, and from 1989 to 1990 she was a Theodore Rousseau Fellow.
As a Research Fellow in the European Paintings Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1991-92), she wrote entries for exhibition and permanent collection catalogues. From 1992 to 1995, she was an Assistant Curator in the Paintings Department of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, looking after the European paintings collection from the Baroque period through the 19th century.
Dr. Stein was the exhibition organizer and the catalogue co-author for Eighteenth-century French Drawings in New York Collections, which was on view at the Metropolitan Museum February 1 - April 25, 1999. Other projects at the Metropolitan Museum have included French 17th-century Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum (1996) and installation coordination for Poussin: Works on Paper, Drawings from the Collection of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II (1996). She also contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue Prized Possessions: European Paintings from Private Collections of Friends of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1992).
Other publications have included articles in Burlington Magazine, Master Drawings, Connaissance des Arts, Art Bulletin, and Revue de l'Art.
Eric P. Kjellgren
Eric Kjellgren — the newly named Assistant Curator of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas — has been a Research Assistant in the department since 1995. He is the curator of the current Metropolitan Museum exhibition Guardians of the Longhouse: Art in Borneo and has specialized research interests in the art, material culture, indigenous religion, and oral traditions of Oceania, as well as the transcultural movement of objects and ideas.
Dr. Kjellgren graduated from Harvard University, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, with an A.B. in anthropology. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Hawaii in Manoa. Among his academic honors are a 1995-96 Fulbright-Hays Scholarship for Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad.
He was Assistant to the Associate Curator of North American Collections at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University (1985-86), and Research Assistant at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu (1990-93).
He has published papers in such academic journals as Journal of the Polynesian Society, Mana, Journal of Pacific History, and Pacific Arts.
Dr. Kjellgren resides in New York City.
Christopher Sherwin Lightfoot
Joining the Department of Greek and Roman Art as Associate Curator is Christopher Lightfoot, who since 1996 has been Research Associate in the Department of
Archaeology at the University of Durham in England.
After receiving his Bachelor of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from St. John's College at the University of Oxford — with his thesis on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire,with special reference to the reign of Constantius II — Dr. Lightfoot was Research Assistant in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum in London (1982-86), Assistant Director of Administration & Research at the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, Turkey (1986-92), Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology and History of Art at Bilkent University in Ankara (1992-95), and Fellow at the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara (1995).
He has lectured widely, has taught at Bilkent University and at Koç University in Istanbul, and has worked at excavations in Amorium, Sagalassos, and Tille in Turkey.
Michiel Christiaan Plomp
Most recently Curator of Old Master Paintings and Decorative Arts at the Museum Het Prinsenhof in Delft, Michiel Plomp will join the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Metropolitan Museum as Associate Curator of Northern Drawings.
Dr. Plomp's professional experience has included work in Sotheby's-Mak van Waay in Amsterdam (1979-83); at the Inventarisation-Project of Netherlandish Paintings in Italian Public Collections, through the Dutch Institute for the History of Art in Florence (1983-84); in the Inventory Project of the Art Department of Teylers Museum in Haarlem (1985-87) and later cataloguing Dutch 17th-century drawings there (1988-90); and in the Inventory Project of Netherlandish Paintings in Liguria, through the Dutch Institute for History and Art (1990-91).
He has served as guest curator for exhibitions including Hendrick Goltzius e suoi allievi in the Museo Civico di Bassano del Grappa (1990), Jan de Bisschop, Lawyer and Draughtsman in the Museum het Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam (1991-92), and Leonaert Bramer: Ingenious Painter and Draughtsman in Rome and Delft (1992-94) and Delft Masters: Contemporaries of Vermeer in the Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft (1995-96). He was also a guest curator, cataloguing drawings and prints, at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht. He has held fellowships at the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (1992-95) and at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1996-97).
Born in the Netherlands, Dr. Plomp earned his Diploma from the Rijnlands Lyceum in Oegstgeest in 1997, and his Doctorandus in the History of Art at the University of Utrecht in 1983, with a thesis on the drawings of Leonaert Bramer.
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