Kelly Taxter, a curator of contemporary art at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan, has been named the director of the Parrish Art Museum, the museum announced last week.
Ms. Taxter will replace Terrie Sultan, who had been director of the Parrish for 12 years when she announced she was stepping down last June. She will assume leadership of the Water Mill museum on March 22.
The Parrish is at a critical juncture, having experienced a severe loss of revenue last year as a direct result of the shutdowns required by the Covid-19 pandemic. After its operating budget was cut from $5.5 million to $4 million, the museum was forced to enact temporary layoffs and furloughs, according to Mary E. Frank, its board president and co-chair, in comments made to The New York Times.
Starting in 2013 as an assistant curator, Ms. Taxter's tenure at the Jewish Museum was marked by buzzy and well-received retrospectives of the fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi and artists such as and Rachel Feinstein, with opening guests including Sofia Coppola, Anna Wintour, Marc Jacobs, Steve Martin, Wendi Murdoch, and Michael Stipe.
She worked on group shows featuring titles such as "Unorthodox" and "Take Me (I'm Yours)." Projects featuring Laurie Simmons, Eva LeWitt, Vivian Suter, Alex Israel, Valeska Soares, and Chantal Joffe are also to her credit. Additionally, she will be a guest curator for an upcoming survey of the work of Jonas Mekas, a filmmaker.
Her previous roles were at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Conn., and at a commercial gallery she founded in 2003 that closed in 2011.
The Parrish is currently closed to visitors and plans to reopen in early spring, when it will have its annual student exhibition. Other shows coming up this year include a Platform exhibition of the work of Tomashi Jackson, a focused study of Roy Lichtenstein's early years, and Joel Meyerowitz's photographs of the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, taken from Ground Zero. An outdoor sculpture installation, "Field of Dreams," is open through this summer and can be accessed at any time, free of charge.
