Nora Lawrence
Storm King Art Center of New Windsor has appointed Nora Lawrence artistic director and chief curator.
Lawrence, who has served as a curator at the outdoor sculpture center for ten years, will be the first to occupy the newly created role of artistic director.
She will assume her new dual roles in January 2022, overseeing the museum’s curatorial program, collection, acquisitions, site-specific commissions, temporary exhibitions, publications and archives.
David R. Collens, who has served as director since 1974, will become director emeritus.
Lawrence joined Storm King in 2011 and has since been instrumental in bringing in new artists. Her accomplishments include the establishment in 2013 of the Outlooks program, which invites an emerging or mid-career artist to create a site-specific work for the institution.
In 2015, Lawrence and Storm King’s education and public programs team in collaboration with Shandaken Projects initiated the museum’s first artist residency.
Among the recent exhibitions and projects Lawrence has developed are “Indicators: Artists on Climate Change” (2018); “Mark Dion: Follies” (2019); “Kiki Smith river light” (2020); “Rashid Johnson: The Crisis” (2021); and Sarah Sze’s permanent installation “Fallen Sky” (2021).
The open-air museum contains what is perhaps the largest collection of contemporary outdoor art in the United States.
“No place is like Storm King and no job could be like this one,” Lawrence said. “The possibilities that Storm King affords artists and cultural practitioners are boundless. There is so much exciting work in our collective future.”