The Mattress Manufacturing unit, a recent artwork museum and residency program in Pittsburgh, has named Anthony Elms as its inventive director, starting subsequent February.
On the Mattress Manufacturing unit, Elms will oversee the establishment’s complete inventive programming, from its exhibitions and commissions to its residency program to public engagement and interpretative methods. His appointment, after a nationwide search, comes because the museum prepares for its fiftieth anniversary in 2027.
“Anthony is the proper match for this second on the Mattress Manufacturing unit,” David Oresick, the museum’s govt director, mentioned in a press release. “His artist-first strategy, his deep expertise throughout the artwork world, and his historical past of manufacturing exhibitions that resonate extensively whereas remaining deeply attentive to the artists’ visions make him an distinctive addition to our crew. We’re thrilled to welcome him and excited for the brand new power, care, and artistic ambition he’ll carry to our program.”
Elms has a confirmed observe file in each the institutional and business sectors of the artwork world. Shortly after becoming a member of the Institute of Up to date Artwork, Philadelphia in 2011 as an affiliate curator, Elms was named a cocurator of the 2014 Whitney Biennial, the final iteration of the recurring exhibition in its former house, the Breuer Constructing. He organized that exhibition with artist Michelle Grabner and Stuart Comer, chief curator of media and efficiency artwork on the Museum of Trendy Artwork. Every curator took over a ground of the Whitney, with Artwork in America describing Elms’s ground as “trump[ing] the opposite two curators along with his poetic use of empty area.”
Elms labored on the ICA Philadelphia till 2021, being promoted to its chief curator in 2015. On the ICA, he organized exhibitions Karyn Olivier, Cauleen Smith, Rodney McMillian, and Christopher Knowles, amongst others.
After leaving the ICA, he joined the New York–primarily based gallery Peter Freeman, Inc., as a director in 2022, the place he was equally accountable for mounting exhibitions and making non-public gross sales. On the time, he was a part of a rising pattern of museum curators becoming a member of business galleries. “It was this explicit gallery,” he advised ARTnews on the tie. “I’ve at all times had a love of artists from Japanese Europe, in order that materials me.”
Elms departed Peter Freeman final yr and has continued to work as an impartial curator. He lately organized a solo exhibition for McMillian on the Henry Artwork Gallery in Seattle, which is on view by subsequent Could.
“Mattress Manufacturing unit’s dedication to supporting artists is the center of its historical past and mission,” Elms mentioned in a press release. “Artists problem our definitions of artwork, figuring out its function, its potentialities, its values. For practically fifty years, the Mattress Manufacturing unit has given artists the area and help to discover these questions on their very own phrases. I’m honored by the invitation to share on this difficult work with Pittsburgh and past.”
