U. names interim head of ICA

Four months after Penn's Institute of Contemporary Art Director Patrick Murphy announced his resignation, the University this week selected an interim director to fill the slot. Former Interim Provost Michael Wachter tapped Judith Tannenbaum, 54, to begin this week as the ICA's interim director, a position she held nine years ago before Murphy took over. "I am happy to serve and basically carry the job during its transition," Tannenbaum said. She added that she did not actively seek out the position and that she is not interested in being a contender for the permanent job. At the time of her appointment, Tannenbaum was the ICA's associate director and curator. She currently serves on the art committee of the City of Philadelphia's Redevelopment Authority as well as on the Mayor's Art Advisory Council in City Hall. In a press release issued Wednesday by the University, Wachter said he was "very pleased that someone with Judith's experience and commitment has agreed to serve as interim director for the ICA." He added that arts institutions like the ICA "help us to meet our cultural priorities." Three University representatives -- Graduate School of Fine Arts Dean Gary Hack, School of Arts and Sciences Associate Dean Rebecca Bushnell and provost's office staff member Bonnie Gibson -- have been charged with finding a new ICA director since Murphy stepped down in November. The ICA also has three representatives of its own on the search committee. Gibson said that while a specific date for a permanent hiring is "difficult to predict," the committee's current target is July 1. She said the committee has just recently begun advertising for the job and has hired the assistance of a professional search firm -- Management Consultants for the Arts. According to Gibson, the committee is looking for "someone who can do it all" -- specifically a person with "strong management experience" and "curatorial experience in the arts." The 35-year-old ICA -- located at 36th and Sansom streets and overseen by the provost's office -- has long featured avant-garde exhibits of contemporary art. It was the ICA, for example, that exhibited the work of then-unknown artist Andy Warhol and became the first public space to show his work. In 1988, the institute showed an exhibit of the work of the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The exhibit was denounced as pornographic and homoerotic by some members of Congress and sparked a long debate about the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts -- which funds the ICA and many of its artists. Two years later, when Murphy took over as director, he displayed another controversial exhibit -- Andres Serrano's art, deemed antireligious by many critics -- which led further Congressional debate. Murphy served as ICA director for eight years and announced in September that he would resign and return to his native Ireland this summer to assume a similar position. Until then, he will remain with the ICA in an adjunct status to curate two of the exhibits he helped to establish -- "Three Stanzas: Miroslaw Balka, Robert Gober and Seamus Heaney," opening today, and "Teresita Fernandez," opening March 19.

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