Elizabeth Armstrong is an American curator of contemporary and modern art.Smith, Roberta. "Jasper Johns, Incessant Recycler of Images," The New York Times, July 29, 1990, Sect. 2, p. 29. Retrieved February 11, 2021.Mahal, Jennifer K. "Q&A—The art of putting it together, Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2002. Retrieved February 9, 2021.Knight, Christopher. "Smack in the middle," Los Angeles Times, October 10, 2007. Retrieved February 10, 2021. Beginning in the late 1980s, she served in chief curatorial and leadership roles at the Walker Art Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA), Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Palm Springs Art Museum.Letran, Vivian. "Curator Armstrong Is Named as Acting Director of OCMA," Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2001. Retrieved February 9, 2021.Spayde, Jon. "New art meets old masters: a conversation with MIA curator Elizabeth Armstrong," Minn Post, October 11, 2013. Retrieved February 11, 2021.Ng, David. "Palm Springs Art Museum names Elizabeth Armstrong as new director," Los Angeles Times, November 14, 2014. Retrieved February 9, 2021. She has organized numerous touring exhibitions and catalogues that gained national and international attention; among the best known are: "In the Spirit of Fluxus" (Walker, 1993), "Ultrabaroque: Aspects of Post-Latin American Art" (San Diego, 2000),Schwabsky, Barry. "David Reed: Paintings," Artforum, September 1998. Retrieved February 11, 2021. and "Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury" (OCMA, 2007).Johnson, Ken. "Store in a cool, fertile place: 1950s California," The New York Times, March 21, 2008. Retrieved February 11, 2021. She is also known for organizing three California Biennials (2002–6)Pagel, David. "'California Biennial' Is on the Right Laugh Track," Los Angeles Times, July 17, 2002. Retrieved February 10, 2021.Helfand, Glen. "2004 California Biennial," Artforum, 2004. Retrieved February 11, 2021.Bedford, Christopher "2006 California Biennial," Artforum, September 2006. Retrieved February 11, 2021. and notable exhibitions of David Reed and Mary Heilmann (the artist's first retrospective).Knight, Christopher. "Life of the abstractionist party," Los Angeles Times, June 3, 2007. Retrieved February 10, 2021. Armstrong's curatorial work and publications have been recognized by the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Center for Curatorial Leadership, the Getty Foundation Pacific Standard Time project and the National Endowment for the Arts, among other organizations.Artforum. "Andy Warhol Foundation Announces 2009–2010 Curatorial Research Fellows," News, July 1, 2010. Retrieved February 11, 2021.Center for Curatorial Leadership. " CCL Announces Selection of First Fellows for 2008," News, October 2, 2007. Retrieved February 11, 2021.Palm Springs Life. "Palm Springs Art Museum Presents Ground-Breaking Exhibitions," November 10, 2017. Retrieved March 8, 2021.National Endowment for the Arts. 1989 Annual Report, p. 127.
Education and career Armstrong was born in Winchester, Massachusetts. She enrolled at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts intending to be an artist, but transitioned to art history and cultural studies, earning a BA in American Studies in 1974.Abbe, Mary. "Minneapolis curator to head Palm Springs Art Museum," StarTribune, November 14, 2014. Retrieved February 11, 2021. After graduating, she worked as a grants administrator at the National Endowment for the Humanities (1976–9) before entering graduate school at the University of California Berkeley to earn an MA in the History of Art in 1982. While at Berkeley, she worked as a research assistant for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and as a curatorial assistant for the Lowie Museum of Anthropology, where she contributed to the 1983 publication “The Anthropology of World’s Fairs: San Francisco's Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915."Benedict, Burton (ed.). The Anthropology of World's Fairs: San Francisco's Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915, Berkeley, CA: Lowie Museum of Anthropology, 1983. Retrieved March 8, 2021. An essay based on the subject of her master's thesis, "American Scene as Satire, the Art of Paul Cadmus in the 1930s," appeared in Arts Magazine in March 1982.Armstrong, Elizabeth N. "American Scene as Satire: The Art of Paul Cadmus in the 1930s," Arts Magazine, March 1982.
She was hired by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis as an assistant curator in 1983, taking over as curator from 1989–1996.Artforum. "New Curator at Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Young Artist Wins Metro Five Award Fellows," News, June 24, 2008. Retrieved February 11, 2021. She was hired as senior curator by the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego in 1996, and organized twelve exhibitions there, including four touring shows with major publications.Chang, Young. "Orange County Museum of Art fills jobs," Los Angeles Times, February 8, 2001. Retrieved February 9, 2021.Knight, Christopher. "A Show With a Smirk on Its Face," Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1998. Retrieved February 9, 2021. Armstrong joined the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) in Newport Beach in 2001 as deputy director for programs and chief curator, serving until 2008; she served as interim director in 2001–2.Berman, Art. "Arts and Entertainment Reports from The Times, News Services and the Nation’s Press," Los Angeles Times, September 17, 1996. Retrieved February 9, 2021.Boucher, Geoff. "Arts and Entertainment Reports from The Times, News Services and the Nation’s Press," Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2001. Retrieved February 9, 2021. During her time at OCMA, she organized three California Biennials (2002, 2004, 2006) and several touring exhibitions with accompanying publications.Muchnic, Suzanne. "A rare look at beauty’s spoils," Los Angeles Times, June 5, 2005. Retrieved February 9, 2021.Johnson, Ken. "Unabashedly Joyful Paintings That Look Fun and Easy, but Don’t Be Fooled," The New York Times, October 23, 2008. Retrieved February 11, 2021.
In 2008, Armstrong returned to Minneapolis, taking positions at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) as its first curator of contemporary art and as founding director of the Center for Alternative Museum Practice (CAMP). In 2014, the Palm Springs Art Museum hired her as executive director, a position she held until 2018.Artforum. "Palm Springs Art Museum Names New Director," News, November 17, 2014. Retrieved February 11, 2021.Vankin, Deborah. "Palm Springs Art Museum names Louis Grachos its new director," Los Angeles Times, April 10, 2019. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
Curatorial work Armstrong's curatorial work and leadership has been recognized for guiding contemporary museums through change, growth and a rethinking of their cultural roles in relation to local communities, new audiences and the wider art world. Her exhibitions seek to generate new discourse, often delving into museum and private collections to highlight underrated genres (e.g., printmaking), groups (women), themes and periods (early American modernism) or to create connections between contemporary art and other fields—design, architecture, music, decorative arts, religion—or between established, obscure and emerging artists.Kimmelman, Michael. "In Westchester, Fantasies of Odilon Redon'",The New York Times, August 24, 1990, p. C22. Retrieved February 11, 2021. She has also organized several definitive or first major exhibitions involving under-recognized movements (Fluxus, California hard-edge painters), regions (Latin America, mid-century Southern California), and artists (Mary Heilmann).Woodard, Josef. "Flashing Back to Absurdity With the Art of Fluxus: The ‘60s movement, which thumbed its nose at conventional wisdom, returns in an amusing, confusing show in Santa Barbara," Los Angeles Times, September 8, 1994. Retrieved February 10, 2021.Knight, Christopher. "Updating Baroque Sensuality," Los Angeles Times, October 3, 2000. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
Walker Art Center At the Walker Art Center, Armstrong helped establish the museum's Print Study Center and organized several innovative exhibitions focused on printmaking, by artists ranging from Frank Stella to Susan Rothenberg. "First Impressions" (1989) documented the growth of printmaking in the United States over the previous 30 years, using diverse work by Lynda Benglis, Helen Frankenthaler, Bruce Conner and Larry Rivers and later artists Carroll Dunham, Elizabeth Murray and Donald Sultan; New York Times critic William Zimmer called the show "an especially clear statement on the origins of the contemporary art world," accompanied by a catalogue filled with now-classic images and rich quotations.Zimmer, William. "An Outpouring of Creativity in Neuberger's 'First Impressions'",The New York Times, September 2, 1990, Sect. 12WC, p. 20. Retrieved February 11, 2021. Roberta Smith described the subsequent survey, "Jasper Johns: Printed Symbols" (1990), as brilliantly organized (by the different print workshops he collaborated with) to enable viewers to understand each printmaking medium as a distinct entity.
In 1993, Armstrong presented "In the Spirit of Fluxus" (organized with Joan Rothfuss), the first major museum exhibition in the U.S. to document the international Fluxus movement from the 1960s to the present, a significant contribution to scholarship on the group; the Los Angeles Times described the widely traveled exhibition as a commanding, "big, brawling, cerebral circus of an art show."McKenna, Kristine. "Yoko Reconsidered: Just because she became Mrs. John Lennon doesn’t mean she stopped being an artist," Los Angeles Times, April 11, 1993. Retrieved February 10, 2021. During her Walker tenure, Armstrong also mounted exhibitions of Marcel Duchamp, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Ann Hamilton and David Ireland, Robert Motherwell, Claes Oldenburg, and area photographer Paul Shambroom.Letran, Vivian. "New Curator for Art Museum," Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2001. Retrieved February 9, 2021.Armstrong, Elizabeth. Peter Fischli and David Weiss in a Restless World, Minneapolis, MN: Minneapolis Walker Art Center, 1996. Retrieved February 12, 2021.Flam, Jack D. Robert Motherwell, Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 1985. Retrieved February 12, 2021.
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego During Armstrong's tenure at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (MCASD), she organized several notable exhibitions with an increasingly cosmopolitan focus. "Ultrabaroque: Aspects of Post-Latin American Art" (2000, curated with Victor Zamudio-Taylor) featured 80 diverse works made in the prior decade years by sixteen, far-flung, mainly younger artists (e.g., Miguel Calderón, Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Adriana Varejão, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle).Schwabsky, Barry. "UltraBaroque: Aspects of Post–Latin American Art," Artforum, September 2000. Retrieved February 11, 2021. Critics described the show as ambitious, compelling and provocative in its challenge to misperceptions and stereotypes that prevented American audiences from understanding Latin American art's range and sophistication.Muchnic, Suzanne. "Latin American art springs forth in California museums," Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2012. Retrieved February 10, 2021. During this time, Armstrong also curated exhibitions of Brazilian sculptor Valeska Soares, Mexican artist Silvia Gruner, French painter Bertrand Lavier, and California-based, socially engaged artist Jean Lowe.Robinson, Walter. "New This Month in U.S. Museums," Artnet, April 1998. Retrieved February 15, 2021.Barry, Robert. "Bertrand Lavier," Frieze, November 17, 2013. Retrieved February 12, 2021.Ollman, Leah. "A Quirky Questioning of Society’s ‘Progress,’" Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2000. Retrieved February 9, 2021.