WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Williams College Museum of Art announced three new curatorial appointments: Christa Clarke, Director of Curatorial Strategy for the new museum project; Dan Byers, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art; and Rachael Nelson, Mellon Curatorial Fellow. 

 

"At this unprecedented moment in WCMA's history, as we break ground on the first purpose-built home, the museum staff is hard at work researching and caring for the collection, planning for the move to the new building, and envisioning the future program," Class of 1956 Director Pamela Franks said. "We are beyond excited to add the curatorial experience and perspective of Christa, Dan and Rachael to the team at this critical and generative moment." 

 

As Director of Curatorial Strategy, Clarke will help shape and implement the vision for WCMA's future in the new building. Her decades of experience in curatorial leadership and forging close collaborations among educators and curators positions her ideally to contribute to the next era of WCMA's teaching mission. She will work collaboratively with staff to develop the curatorial strategy and content related to the inaugural installation, publication and website. She also will contribute to WCMA's global collections through research, stewardship and acquisitions in her area of scholarly expertise, historic and contemporary arts of global Africa.

 

As WCMA's new Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Byers will be a member of the museum's curatorial engagement division. In his role he will be responsible for developing exhibitions, stewarding existing collections, and shepherding new acquisitions of modern and contemporary art. He will bring his years of curatorial leadership, expertise working with living artists, commitment to collaboration within and across institutions, scholarship, and teaching experience to bear on the vision and implementation of WCMA's future program. 

 

Nelson comes to WCMA having most recently served as an educator at Old North Illuminated Church, where she facilitated visitor learning through historical interpretation of the church with a focus on anti-racism and active citizenship. In addition to her ongoing scholarship on material and visual culture in the Ancient Mediterranean, her prior internship experience conducting provenance research on collection objects, managing policy for deaccession proposals, and creating a new model for institutional records management will be a tremendous asset to the mission critical work of assessing, researching, and interpreting WCMA's collection for the inaugural installation in the new building, which she will be actively participating in during her fellowship. 

 

With the addition of Clarke, Byers, and Nelson to the extraordinary team of curators of exhibitions and collections and curators of engagement, WCMA is primed to undertake a thoughtful and deliberate process of curatorial visioning that encompasses the findings from a comprehensive collections assessment and embraces the possibilities offered by the new facility to build a museum of the future that centers gathering and learning together with art.