The Board of Directors of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) today announced the appointment of Lisa Melandri as incoming Director. This decision follows a five-month international search. Melandri, currently the Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMoA), will assume her new position in August 2012.

“We are thrilled that Lisa will join CAM as we near the tenth anniversary of our building,” said David Obedin, Chairman of the Board. “Given her experience and success, I am confident that she will lead the Museum into an exciting new chapter of growth and development.”

Melandri has served in a managerial and curatorial capacity at the Santa Monica Museum of Art since 2001, when she was named Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs. During her tenure, SMMoA has grown significantly in scope and size, nearly doubling its staff and operating budget (to $2.2 million), and has increasingly received national and international recognition, respect, and critical acclaim.

“I am tremendously excited for this new opportunity and challenge to make CAM ever more relevant and important to the global world of contemporary art,” stated Melandri. “I look forward to working with the extraordinary board and staff to transform the Museum into an essential space for discovery, providing exhibitions and programs that inspire, delight, teach, surprise, and embrace each visitor. I am thrilled to become a part of the St. Louis community, and eager to learn about and participate in the cultural richness of the city.”

“I could not be happier for Lisa. It gives me great pleasure to have provided the context for a brilliant young person to launch her career,” said SMMoA Executive Director Elsa Longhauser.

Melandri is the curator of Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe, the artist’s first solo museum project currently on view at SMMoA, which will travel to the Brooklyn Museum in September 2012. She also was the curator for Marco Brambilla: The Dark Lining (2011), Combustione: Alberto Burri and America (2010), William Pope.L—Art After White People: Time, Trees and Celluloid…(2007), and Enigma Variations: Philip Guston and Giorgio de Chirico (2006, co-curated with Michael Taylor). Melandri and Longhauser were co-curators of Al Taylor: Wire Instruments and Pet Stains (2010) and Beatrice Wood: Career Woman (2011), one of the most positively reviewed exhibitions of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980 initiative.

“I am so pleased that Lisa Melandri is joining the Museum and enthusiastically anticipate developing CAM’s future with her,” said Dominic Molon, Chief Curator at CAM. “We share a commitment to building a culturally diverse exhibition program and creating a balance of presentations that are intellectually rigorous and critically significant yet broadly accessible, timely, and relevant. Lisa organized challenging and prescient exhibitions at the Santa Monica Museum of Art that provide a strong indication of the dynamic vision she will bring to CAM.”

Prior to joining SMMoA, Melandri was Acting Artistic Director at the Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and Master’s degree in the History of Art from the Williams College Graduate Program. She will relocate to St. Louis with her husband, Jordan Gaunce, a highly regarded prepress technician who provides specialized work for movie studios, advertising agencies, and car manufacturers.

Board member Dwyer Brown has served as Interim Director since December 2011, when former Director Paul Ha departed to become the Director of MIT’s List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, MA. CAM engaged Linda Sweet of Management Consultants for the Arts, Inc. to facilitate the search.

“I am grateful for Dwyer’s outstanding dedication to the Museum and his leadership throughout this transition process,” noted Obedin.

Brown will continue to serve as Interim Director until Melandri’s arrival at the Museum in August.

For more information, please contact Allyson Pittman, Public Relations Manager at 314.535.0770 x311 or apittman@camstl.org.

Congratulations to CAM’s architect, Brad Cloepfil, on the opening of his newest architectural endeavor – the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, CO. Cloepfil, Founding Principal of Allied Works Architecture, designed a big, horizontal concrete box with a cantilevered entrance and a glass-walled first floor for a cost of $15.5 million. Click here to read an article from The Kansas City Star for more information about Denver’s newest art museum housing some of the greatest and least-known American paintings of the post-World War II era — big, craggy, all-over abstractions made by Clyfford Still (1904-1980), perhaps the most cantankerous and original of the abstract expressionists.

Watch the video put together by Amy from the Pulitzer on the Contemporary’s new media and posted on saintlouisartmap.org. The video is part of a series “catching up with…” St. Louis arts organizations.

The Museum is closed for installation until January 22 which is Opening Night of Sean Landers: 1991-1994, Improbable History and Stephen Prina: Modern Movie Popin the Main Galleries and Xavier Cha in The Front Room. You can stay connected to the Contemporary by visiting this blog, social networking sites, and the Museum’s website. Click here for all the ways to stay connected while we are closed.

The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis would like to wish you and yours a very safe and happy New Year!

Read the blog posted on saintlouisartmap.org. Find out about the Piñata Closing Party, the event to mark the end of the exhibition For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there.

Mariana Castillo Deball / Tessa Rehkop

Mariana Castillo Deball was born in 1975 in Mexico City, and she currently lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin. Her Klein Bottle Piñata (2009) is being presented as part of the current exhibition For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there. The gigantic, blue, Klein bottle-shaped piñata hangs over the Contemporary’s performance space allowing viewers to examine the curious object. It is made out of paper máché and is larger than life. A Klein bottle is a non-orientable surface, meaning the inside and outside cannot be distinguished. This is similar to a Mobious strip, except that a Klein bottle has no boundary. What’s inside the Piñata is a mystery and will be revealed the last day of the show at the Piñata Closing Party held at the Contemporary on Sunday, January 3 from 4:00 – 6:00 pm. Guests will be allowed to take swings at the piñata to break it open!

Falke Pisano / Tessa Rehkop

Falke Pisano was born in 1978 in Amsterdam, where she currently lives and works. Her work, Chillida (Forms and Feelings) (2006), is being shown as part of the current exhibition For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there. It consists of a video projection of the artist looking through a book photographs. These photographs are of sculptures by Eduardo Chillida captured by amateur photographer David Finn, who travels all over the world to find them. He eventually publishes the sculptures in a book in the late 1990’s. Using two separate projections, Pisano flips through Finn’s book of photographs while providing her commentary. The artist believed it was important to describe what she felt the moment she first looked at the photographs and their descriptions. Some of the sculptures Pisano views with appreciation because they are what she describes as “strong and natural” just as she herself would like to be. Pisano begins to draw lines and create her own shapes using images of the sculptures, so the viewer doesn’t just hear her interpretation but can now see it also. Click here for the gallery guide.

For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there is on view for only a short time longer. It closes on Sunday, January 3, 2010. You can read a review of this major group show that was published in the December issue of Art in America here!

Rachel Harrison / Tessa Rehkop

Rachel Harrison was born in 1966 in New York City, where she currently lives and works. Her work, Voyage of the Beagle, is named after a journal by Charles Darwin and is currently being displayed as part of the current exhibition For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there. It consists of fifty-eight photographs of a wide variety of characters. Lining the length of two entire walls, Harrison’s images range from 5000-year old stone figures to a Barbie doll to a figure of Elvis. The series seems to be a playful, humorous way to represent gaps in culture from the past and present but also holes that exist between cultures even today. Along with these images Harrison presents three abstract sculptures that are coated with the artist’s signature pearlescent paint.