MARJORIE SEARL

Marjorie Searl will be speaking on Artist George Haushalter at the 2009 Regional Fair this coming Saturday at Rochester’s Calvary St. Andrew’s Church, at 11 AM.

Marjorie Searl is the Curator of American Art and the Chief Curator at the Memorial Art Gallery. Her most recent publication, Seeing America: Painting and Sculpture from the Collection of the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, was the culmination of a multi-year research project funded in part by the Henry Luce Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. The publication accompanied the reinstallation of the 19th and 20th century American art galleries at MAG. Most recently, she curated the exhibition Maira Kalman: The Elements of Style.

In 2003, Searl organized the exhibition Leaving For the Country: George Bellows at Woodstock , a groundbreaking retrospective of the work of the last five years of Bellows’s paintings and prints that had a national tour. She also wrote for and edited the exhibition catalog. Searl has spoken on George Bellows at the Woodstock Artists Association and Hobart College. Previously, she curated the Memorial Art Gallery exhibition About Face: John Singleton Copley’s Portrait of a Colonial Silversmith, the first in a series of Masterpiece in Context exhibitions, which investigated the Gallery’s portrait of silversmith and engraver, Nathaniel Hurd. This project which was funded by grants from the Museum Loan Network, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts. In connection with this exhibition, she has written for the online publication AntiquesAmerica.com. She also edited and wrote for the Gallery’s scholarly journal Porticus: About "About Face": A New Look at an Early American Mystery.

She was the co-curator, assistant catalog editor and writer for the Memorial Art Gallery exhibition Head, Heart and Hand: Elbert Hubbard and the Roycrofters, which toured in 1994-6 under the auspices of the American Federation of Arts. Exhibitions that she has curated include: Furniture from Rochester’s Frank Lloyd Wright House; Architectural Drawings of Louis Kahn’s First Unitarian Church, Rochester; and Chaim Gross’ Song of Songs Portfolio.

Searl was formerly the Gallery’s Estelle B. Goldman curator of education, with responsibility for school and adult programs. She has lectured extensively on museum projects and American art and architecture at the Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester area colleges and universities, and at national conferences including MidAtlantic Association of Museums, the Annual Arts & Crafts Conference in Asheville, North Carolina, and regional meetings of the American Association of Museums. She is active in community initiatives, including the advisory council of the Caroline Werner Gannett project at RIT.

Searl is a graduate of Smith College, Teachers College, Columbia University, and the Cooperstown Graduate Program.

For Regional Fair details click on the October arrow to the left of the page, then on the first item – HERETICS, HISTORY and HALLELUJAS.

More speaker bios tomorrow