The Whitney announces curatorial appointments
Marcela Guerrero; Rujeko Hockley, photographs by Jonathan Dorado
NEW YORK – The Whitney Museum of American Art announces Tuesday that Marcela Guerrero and Rujeko Hockley have been appointed as assistant curators. Hockley, an assistant curator at the Brooklyn Museum, will begin working at the Whitney on March 6. Guerrero, a curatorial fellow at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, will join the curatorial team on April 25.
“Marcela and Ru have distinguished themselves as two of the brightest and most passionate curatorial voices of their generation. Having worked across the country in California, Texas, and New York, they add a wide range of knowledge and new field-specific expertise to the Whitney’s curatorial team,” said Scott Rothkopf, the Whitney’s deputy director. “Their scholarly acumen is matched by a frontline commitment to emerging artists, and I have no doubt their contributions to the Whitney’s program and collection will help broaden and reshape our narratives of the art of the United States, both past and present.”
Since 2014 Guerrero has been a curatorial fellow at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where she is involved in the upcoming exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 (2017), organized as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative and guest-curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Andrea Giunta. Along with Fajardo-Hill, Guerrero curated the show’s selection of Latina and Chicana artists and has written the catalog chapter on Caribbean women artists, along with more than 60 biographical entries.
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Guerrero received her B.A. from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, and holds a doctorate in Art History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Hockley joins the Whitney after four years at the Brooklyn Museum, where she is assistant curator of contemporary art. While at the Brooklyn Museum, she contributed to numerous exhibitions and related public programs. Hockley has also been closely involved with collection planning and acquisitions, as well as the Brooklyn Museum’s Contemporary Art Acquisitions Committee.
She received her B.A. from Columbia University and is a doctorate candidate in Art History, Theory & Criticism at the University of California, San Diego.
The Whitney Museum of American Art, founded in 1930 by the artist and philanthropist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), houses the foremost collection of American art from the 20th and 20st centuries.
