Rachel Reese has been hired as the new associate curator of modern and contemporary art at the Telfair Museums in Savannah. She has been communications manager at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center since 2013; her last day at the Contemporary is October 24.
As the Telfair’s first dedicated curator in modern and contemporary art, Reese will oversee the department’s exhibitions and collection. She will commute to Savannah from Atlanta in November, before moving there in December. Her artist husband, Trevor Reese, who also works at the Contemporary, will join her in December.
Reese has curated a number of independent projects in Atlanta, including “Cardinal/Cardinal” at Marcia Wood Gallery and Twin Kittens (2013); as well as “Pratfall Tramps” at the Contemporary earlier this year. In 2010, she founded Possible Press, a free newsprint publication of artists writings, which stemmed from a project space in Brooklyn, called Possible Projects, that she ran in 2009 with her husband. She also served as the editor of BURNAWAY for nine months in 2013, during which she launched the publication’s first print edition.
A Georgia native, Reese earned her MFA from City College of New York. While in New York, and then Philadelphia, she worked in various capacities at a number of commercial galleries, including Deitch Projects, Petzel Gallery, and Andrew Kreps in New York, and Fleisher/Ollman in Philadelphia.
“This new position offers an exciting opportunity to think about the ethical construction of history by museums and the contemporary curator’s responsibility in building equitable cultural narratives,” Reese said in a press statement. “I anticipate bringing new voices and contexts to Savannah to build audiences and interest around the complex issues addressed by artists working today.”
