Anne Reeve Appointed Senior Curator At Storm King Art Center

(MENAFN- USA Art News) The Storm King Art Center has announced the appointment of Anne Reeve as its new senior curator. This position had been vacant since Nora Lawrence departed in January 2025. Located in New Windsor, New York, the 500-acre sculpture park recently completed a $53 million capital project.

Reeve joined Storm King on November 1. Previously, she served at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, where she managed the modern and contemporary sculpture collection. She also played a lead role in the curatorial program for Hiroshi Sugimoto's $68 million redesign of the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden, a project that took four years to complete and reopened the day before Reeve began her new role.

Reflecting on her work at the Hirshhorn, Reeve described it as“an extraordinary privilege and a long and very collaborative process.” She added,“A garden on the National Mall is as much a civic space as an aesthetic proposition, and we thought carefully about how to create an environment that feels welcoming while expanding capacity and care to the museum's collections, artists and visitors. The design is a testament to Sugimoto's incredible sensitivity and precision as both an artist and architect, and it has been very rewarding to develop this project as a dialogue between the built environment, landscape, collection and the medium of sculpture itself.”

Reeve will now work under Lawrence, who transitioned to executive director of Storm King in January 2025. Reeve noted that working with fellow curators, such as Emily Wei Rales at Glenstone and Melissa Chiu at the Hirshhorn, provides“a shared understanding of how projects develop and how much time and conversation can go into working with an artist, particularly on commissions and site-specific work.” She highlighted that curators understand the intensive and vulnerable nature of artmaking, where initial ideas often evolve substantially in response to site, collection, or materials.

The scale of Reeve's new workplace, 500 acres, stands in stark contrast to the 1.3-acre garden at the Hirshhorn. While the underlying curatorial values remain consistent, the experience of art differs. At Storm King, elements like light, weather, vegetation, and seasons become integral to the visitor's journey over greater distances and longer durations. Both settings, however, prioritize movement through space in the art experience.

Comparing the institutions' approaches to artists, Reeve cited Arlene Shechet's work. Storm King's“Girl Group” exhibition allowed Shechet to create six monumental outdoor sculptures in relation to the landscape and the history of monumental outdoor sculpture. In contrast, Shechet's Maiden May at the Hirshhorn had a more concentrated presence, engaging directly with Gordon Bunshaft's brutalist architecture and the National Mall.

Storm King's annual attendance grew from approximately 71,000 in 2011 to 125,000 by 2025. Reeve emphasized that this growth means a wider audience, including those new to museums, can encounter the collection and contemporary program. The challenge from a curatorial perspective is to accommodate this increase without losing the distinctive qualities of Storm King, such as the ability to wander and gradually discover artworks.

The institution aims for its contemporary program to engage with its history without being constrained by it, complicating the idea of permanence in outdoor sculpture. Recent commissions, many of them ephemeral, have expanded this language. Sonia Gomes introduced textile and Afro-Brazilian traditions, while Dionne Lee developed her first outdoor sculpture at the site. The collection also features artists like Maya Lin with Storm King Wavefield and Sarah Sze with Fallen Sky, who have moved beyond freestanding monumental objects. Reeve stressed the importance of providing artists sufficient time, space, and resources to create work that resonates with Storm King and its visitors.

Source: Observer Arts

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