SAMA Announces Departure of William Rudolph
February 27 – February 27, 2020
February 27 – February 27, 2020
San Antonio, TX—February 27, 2020—The San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) announced today that Dr. William Keyse Rudolph, the Museum’s Chief Curator and Marie and Hugh Halff Curator of American and European Art, will depart effective March 27, 2020. Rudolph, who has been at SAMA for more than six years, leaves to become the Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO. In addition to his curatorial duties, Rudolph has been serving as one of SAMA’s Co-Interim Directors since November 2019. The Museum also announced today that he will be replaced in this role by Dr. Emily J. Sano, SAMA’s Coates-Cowden-Brown Senior Advisor for Asian Art, who also has experience as a museum director, having previously served as the director of Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
“In my six-plus years at SAMA, I have been privileged to learn from an exceptional team of creative and passionate curators, registrars, preparators, educators, and colleagues in every department who are committed to sharing our collections and ambitious exhibitions with our loyal visitors,” said Rudolph. “I will miss the Museum’s family of staff and stakeholders, but I know that their great work will continue as SAMA looks ahead to exciting exhibitions and programs and new leadership, as well as its 40th anniversary in 2021. I hope to bring the energy and excellence of SAMA’s example to the new opportunities and expanded administrative portfolio that are ahead of me in my native Midwest, at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.”
“SAMA has benefited greatly from William’s leadership, initially as Chief Curator and more recently as Co-Interim Director,” said Edward Hart, SAMA’s Board Chair. “His dedication to the Museum and its staff, particularly through fostering an ambitious exhibition program and key curatorial hires, has taken SAMA to a new level of national prominence. Most importantly, his joint leadership with Lisa Tapp has placed SAMA in a position of strength as we conduct our search for the Museum’s next director. Continuing that excellent collaboration will be Emily Sano, the Museum’s new Co-Interim Director, and I am grateful for her willingness to step in at this moment of transition.”
SAMA’s Board of Directors has appointed a committee to identify and hire the next director of the Museum. The committee anticipates hiring an executive recruitment firm to lead the national search by the middle of March.
Dr. Rudolph has served as a curator at the Dallas Museum of Art, Worcester Art Museum, and the Milwaukee Art Museum, in addition to holding prior research and support positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in European paintings and European decorative arts. From 2013 to the present, he has served as Chief Curator and the Marie and Hugh Halff Curator of American and European Art at the San Antonio Museum of Art, leading the curatorial, collections, and exhibits departments. In this role, he increased the curatorial staff, regularized and developed an ambitious special exhibition program, with the majority being SAMA organized projects, and facilitated important acquisitions in multiple collecting areas.
Major exhibitions he has organized or co-organized include Bluebonnets and Beyond: Julian Onderdonk, American Impressionist (2008–2009), In Search of Julien Hudson: Free Artist of Color in Pre-Civil War New Orleans (2011–2012), Thomas Sully: Painted Performance (2013–2014), Highest Heaven: Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Art from the Collection of Roberta and Richard Huber (2016–2017), and Spain: 500 Years of Spanish Painting from the Museums of Madrid (2018), as well as the forthcoming British Luxury: The British Revolution in Decorative Arts, 1715–1840 (2021). He was educated at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the Courtauld Institute of Art, the University of Virginia and Bryn Mawr College. He has also received decorative arts training through the Attingham Summer School for Country Houses and Collections and Royal Collections Studies. In addition, in 2017 Rudolph was a fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership, an intensive training program for art museum curators to develop leadership skills.
