Ethan Lasser appointed curator at Harvard Art Museums

The Harvard Art Museums are pleased to announce the appointment of Ethan Lasser as Margaret S. Winthrop Associate Curator of American Art, effective Sept. 18, 2012. Lasser will join the Art Museums’ Division of European and American Art.

Lasser’s innovative work as a curator and academic experience align well with the Art Museums’ teaching and research mission. From 2007 to the present, Lasser has been curator of the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a research institute committed to advancing progressive scholarship in American art through exhibitions, publications, teaching, and public programming. In 2008, he reinstalled the foundation’s permanent galleries at the Milwaukee Art Museum, a 13,000-square-foot exhibition space for American paintings and decorative arts. He has also served as adjunct professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he initiated the Object Lab, a summer program for undergraduates focused on teaching American art and craft history through hands-on research with artifacts. Lasser is currently developing two new exhibitions—The Practice and Poetics of Repair and Makers: Craft and Industry in American Art—both of which explore his interest in art-making processes and materiality. Lasser, who graduated magna cum laude from Williams College, has a Ph.D. in art history from Yale University.

“Ethan’s pursuit of new approaches to American art through provocative exhibitions and in-gallery teaching experiences make him a timely addition to the curatorial team during this pivotal period in the Harvard Art Museums’ growth,” said Thomas W. Lentz, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museums. “He is already establishing his presence, contributing work on the plans for the reinstallation of the American collection in the galleries of our new facility.”