Stacy C. Hollander, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs, Chief Curator, and Director of Exhibitions at the American Folk Art Museum, was given two First Place Awards for Excellence by the Association of Art Museum Curators and AAMC Foundation at their reception celebrating the accomplishments of the awardees at the International Center of Photography at the ICP Museum on Sunday, May 7, 2017. The organization’s annual prize is dedicated to recognizing groundbreaking new scholarship in the curatorial field. Hollander was awarded First Place in the Exhibition category (from a museum with an operating budget of $2 to $6 million) for her exhibition Securing the Shadow: Posthumous Portraiture in America—a critically-acclaimed presentation of the important and under-recognized genre that captured a memorial portrait of its subject after death—and First Place in the Outstanding Article, Essay, or Extended Catalog Entry category for her essay in the catalog accompanying Securing the Shadow.
“Stacy Hollander combines impeccable scholarship with a discerning eye, resulting in exhibitions that are innovative, engaging, educational, and beautiful,” says Dr. Anne-Imelda Radice, Executive Director, American Folk Art Museum. “Her knowledge of American folk art, particularly from the 18th and 19th centuries, is unmatched, and she has been an intellectual bellwether for traditional folk art for more than thirty years.”
Hollander has served as curator of numerous critically acclaimed exhibitions including American Made, presented at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (2016) and Compass, presented at the South Street Seaport Museum (2012); ju·bi·la·tion an act of rejoicing / ru·mi·nation an act of contemplation (2011–12), Women Only: Folk Art by Female Hands (2010), and The Seduction of Light: Ammi Phillips|Mark Rothko Compositions in Pink, Green, and Red (2008–09) at the American Folk Art Museum; as cocurator of Self-Taught Genius at the American Folk Art Museum (2014–16); and as project coordinator for Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts at the Park Avenue Armory (2011). Her next exhibition, War and Pieced: The Annette Gero Collection of Quilts from Military Fabrics, to be presented from September 6, 2017, through January 7, 2018, will include quilts made by men during times of war from the 18th and 19th centuries. Hollander received her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University, and her MA in American Folk Art Studies from New York University.
Image: The Children of Nathan Starr, Ambrose Andrews (1801–1877), Middletown, Connecticut, 1835, oil on canvas, 28 3/8 x 36 1/2 in.; 39 3/16 x 47 1/4 x 4 13/16 in. (framed), lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift of Nina Howell Starr, in memory of Nathan Comfort Starr (1896–1981), 1987, 1987.404. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY.