The Whitney’s Jane Panetta Decamps for the Met

Jane Panetta, who since 2019 has served as thedirector of the collectionat the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, is heading uptown to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she will work as a curator in that institution’s department of modern and contemporary art,Artnewsreports. Panetta replaces Ian Alteveer, who this past summer accepted the role ofchair of the contemporary art departmentat the Museum of Fine Arts Boston after seventeen years in harness at the Met. Her Whitney colleague David Breslin, since 2019 that institution’s inaugural director of curatorial initiatives,jumped shipfor the Met last year; he now leads the department Panetta is joining.RelatedAKINSANYA KAMBON WINS HAMMER MUSEUM’S MOHN AWARDDETAILS FOR FIRST-EVER MALTA BIENNALE ANNOUNCED “Jane is a rigorous and beloved curator, equally adept at collaborating with living artists as she is framing historical collections for their past and contemporary resonances,” said Breslin in a statement. Panetta joined the Whitney in 2010 as an associate curator, curating “Fast Forward: Paintings from the 1980s” (2017) as well as solo exhibitions of Juan Antonio Olivares and Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Following her promotion in 2019, she organized thecontroversial2019 Whitney Biennial and curated solo shows of Jennifer Packer and Rose B. Simpson.

The Met additionally announced the hiring of Destinee Filmore, a curatorial fellow at the Williams College Museum of Art, as an assistant curator. “Destinee is a rising star in our field, a thoughtful young scholar who thinks deeply about the complexity of art production in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century,” said Breslin. “I’m beyond excited that Jane and Destinee will be joining The Met at such a crucial—and exciting—time for modern and contemporary art at the museum.” The Met is set to see its modern and contemporary wing expand tremendously, thanks to a historic$125 million giftfrom activist collectors Oscar Tang and Agnes Hsu-Tang, for whom the $500 million wing will be named. Mexican architect Frida Escobedo isoverseeingthe project..