The Blanton Museum in Austin has announced two new hires and one promotion, filling up vacancies.
Colette Crossman, currently the Blanton’s administrator of arts and programs, will be Curator of Exhibitions, beginning April 1. She will oversee all aspects of exhibition planning and production and will serve as managing curator for traveling exhibitions hosted at The Blanton.
Ray Williams will be the Blanton’s new director of Education and Academic Affairs; Francesca Consagra will be senior curator of prints, drawings and European paintings. Both start work in June.
Ray Williams, Colette Crossman, and Francesca Consagra
Blanton Director Simone Wicha supplied the starched directorial quote: “Ray and Francesca are widely recognized as among the very best in their fields nationally, and we are tremendously thrilled that they are bringing their distinctive talents and depth of experience to The Blanton team.”
At that, the new guys have some shiny credentials: Ray Williams oversaw the educational initiatives at Harvard’s Fogg, Busch-Reisinger and Arthur M. Sackler museums. Before that, he was director of education at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum of Art, and in that same role at the Peabody Essex Museum and the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler galleries and was named National Art Museum Educator of 1997 by the National Art Education Association.
Francesca Consagra has been senior curator at The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis since 2008. she served as curator and head of the Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at the St. Louis Art Museum and as curator of prints and drawings at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. She oversaw the Suida-Manning Collection of Old Master drawings at Vassar before it was acquired by The Blanton in 1998.
