Rice Names New Director for Sewall Art Gallery

Contact: Michael Cinelli
Phone: (713) 831-4794

Rice Names New Director for Sewall Art Gallery

A master’s degree from Yale
University’s Divinity School might seem an unusual credential for a
curator.

For Kimberly Davenport, the new director of the Sewall Art
Gallery at Rice University, this course of study was, however, a
natural continuation of her interest in the relationship between art
and theology.

This interdisciplinary approach to her field was one element
that brought her to the attention of the university’s search
committee last spring.

"Kimberly brings to the gallery a unique vision, an interesting
outlook on things," said Neil "Sandy" Havens, chair of the
Department of Art and Art History.

Prior to her appointment at Rice, Davenport was a curator of
contemporary art at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn. At the
Atheneum, the nation’s oldest public art museum, she administered
the exhibition, care and research of thousands of post-1945 works of
art.

Davenport’s background includes a rich and diverse spectrum of
professional experience. Trained as an artist, she painted large
indoor and outdoor wall murals for the city of Baltimore as part of
the urban restoration effort in the late 1970s. In 1982, she settled
in Old Lyme, Conn. There she began her curatorial career at the
Florence Griswold Museum, which focuses on an important American
impressionist colony that developed in Old Lyme during the early
part of this century.

In 1986, she began the two-year master’s program at Yale and
chose to remain a third year to complete the further requirements
for the master’s of divinity degree. Those requirements included
fieldwork involving the Department of European and Contemporary Art
at the Yale University Art Gallery. The department had been without
a curator for 10 years.

Davenport had the unique assignment of being a graduate
assistant for the department. In that role, Davenport participated
in the evaluation and reshaping of the collection. Retained as a
staff member after graduation, Davenport cocurated and wrote the
gallery guide for "Mark Rothko: Paintings."

In her new capacity as Rice, Davenport sees her greatest
resources as coming from within the university itself. She looks
forward to the opportunity to draw connections between the visual
arts and the other disciplines represented at Rice.

"Rice is one of the greatest educational institutions in the
nation and merits a gallery with an equally fitting reputation," she
said.

By organizing exhibitions that will challenge and provoke
viewers, Davenport seeks to attain that goal.

Davenport can be reached at her office in the Sewall Gallery at
(713) 527-6069.

Rice University is an independent, coeducational, nonsectarian
private university dedicated to undergraduate teaching and graduate
studies, research and professional training in selected disciplines.
It has an undergraduate population of 2,674, a graduate and
professional student population of 1,449, and a full-time faculty of
437.

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