MIT List Visual Arts Center has appointed New Public Art Curator and Assistant Curator
MIT List Visual Arts Center Director Paul C. Ha has announced a number of staff appointments and promotions in the List Center’s curatorial department. Christopher Ketcham has been appointed Associate Curator, for MIT’s Public Art and Permanent Collection; and Selby Nimrod has been promoted to Assistant Curator for Exhibitions.
“We are pleased to welcome Christopher and congratulate Selby on her promotion,” said List Center Director Paul C. Ha. “Together they bring years of scholarly writing and research that will invigorate our presentation of dynamic cutting-edge exhibitions, campus public art acquisitions, and new-percent-for-art commissions at MIT. I look forward to working with both of them to present the art of our time.”
Christopher Ketcham received his Ph.D. in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Art from MIT in 2018. His dissertation Minimal Art and Body Politics in New York City, 1961-1975 considered the work of several artists in MIT’s permanent collection, including Tony Smith and Dan Graham. He received his M.A. in Art History from Tufts University, and a B.A. from The George Washington University. Before arriving at MIT, he served as Assistant Registrar for Collections and Exhibitions at the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. Recent essays and publications include: Dennis Oppenheim and the Cartographic Expansion of American Sculpture, European Journal of American Culture (forthcoming); Tony Smith: The Order of Space in Three Sculptures, in Tony Smith: Source, Tau, Throwback (New York: Pace Gallery, 2019); and Tony Smith, Bryant Park, and Body Politics in John V. Lindsay’s New York, Public Art Dialogue (2017). Ketcham will oversee MIT’s public art collection and serve as project manager for percent-for-art projects at the Institute.
Formerly the List Center’s curatorial assistant, Selby Nimrod has previously held positions at SculptureCenter, New York, and Site Projects, New Haven. Independently and collaboratively she has organized group exhibitions, screenings, and performances at institutions including the International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York; the Kitchen, New York; Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Seton Gallery at the University of New Haven; and a swimsuit factory, among others. Her writing has appeared in such publications as Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, AQNB, and Big Red & Shiny. Nimrod received her graduate degree from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in 2018.
During her tenure as the List Center’s 2018-2019 curatorial assistant, she contributed scholarly writing to forthcoming monographs on Ericka Beckman and Alicja Kwade, and initiated forthcoming List Projects exhibitions. As the List’s Center’s new assistant curator, her responsibilities include: organizing temporary exhibitions in the museum’s List Projects series, managing the List Center presentations of traveling exhibitions, and project management of all List Center publications.
The List Visual Arts Center is a creative laboratory that provides artists with a space to freely experiment and push existing boundaries. As the contemporary art museum at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the List Center presents a dynamic program of six to nine special exhibitions in its galleries annually, a program of exhibitions by emerging artists known as the List Projects, as well as a broad range of educational programs, events, and publications.
The List Center also maintains and adds to MIT’s permanent art collection; commissions new works through the MIT Percent-for-Art program, a collection of more than 70 site specific artworks throughout the campus; and oversees the Student Loan Art Program, which lends more than 600 works of art annually to MIT undergraduate and graduate students.
