Memphis Brooks Museum of Art picks new director

Zoe Kahr will be the new head of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, the museum board of directors announced Friday.

Kahr comes to Memphis from the prestigious Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where she oversaw a staff of 80 art field professionals as a deputy director in charge of “Curatorial and Planning” duties.

As the Brooks’ 16th executive director, Kahr will guide the museum as it prepares to leave its historic home within Overton Park for a new Downtown riverfront location that is expected to cost about $150 million — a plan that represents the most challenging, ambitious and crucial transition of the museum’s existence since its founding in 1916. 

Zoe Kahr

“I’m joining the Brooks Museum and the greater Memphis arts community at a uniquely thrilling time,” Kahr said in a statement.

“Memphis is renowned for its incredible cultural history,” she said. “Its importance as an arts capital will only grow as the plans for the future of the Brooks Museum move forward. I am honored to lead the museum through this time of tremendous transformation.”

Kahr officially will assume the executive director role on Nov. 1. Since Emily Ballew Neff’s resignation, Brooks deputy director and chief operating officer, Mark Resnick, has been serving as acting executive director.

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In a statement to the press, the Brooks board said that was chosen “unanimously.” She replaces Neff, who resigned in June of 2021 after six years as executive director — and after a rough pandemic year of 2020 that included lengthy closures, plummeting revenues and staff layoffs.

During her 12 years at the Los Angeles museum, Kahr organized more than 300 exhibitions, including such popular shows as “Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters,” which showcased the Oscar-winning director’s collection of fantasy and horror art and memorabilia.

She also developed new museum partnerships in Asia, Latin America, Australia and the Middle East. In addition, she conceived and launched Local Access, which expands access to LACMA‘s collections through a series of exhibitions touring to museums in Los Angeles County and adjacent areas, according to the Brooks’ trustees. The community-access orientation of that effort dovetails with the Brooks board’s desire to connect the museum more purposefully to Memphis’ diverse population with an emphasis on Black art.

“From our first meeting with Zoe, it was clear that she was the perfect person for this role,” said Brooks board chair Carl Person, a past Downtown Memphis Commission chair and a member of the Center City Development Corporation. 

Person called Kahr “eminently qualified” and “universally well-regarded among her peers.”

“The process undertaken by our search committee was professional, thorough and rigorous,” he said. “Dr. Kahr’s deep curatorial experience, global perspective, and managerial acumen make her ideally suited for this position.”

Before Los Angeles, Kahr was assistant director of exhibition planning at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She holds a Doctorate of Philosophy from University College London as well as a Master in Business Administration and Bachelor of Arts in Art History from Yale University.

Largely designed by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron (which in 2001 was awarded architecture’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize, the Pritzker Prize), the new Brooks Museum — sometimes colloquially referred to as the “Brooks on the Bluff” — will be located on a large block at Front and Monroe Downtown.

The proposed riverfront building will contain 112,976 square feet of space — 30,000 more than the current Brooks. Construction has yet to begin, but current plans call for the museum to open in 2025. 

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