DALLAS, Texas (November 2, 2023) – The Nasher Sculpture Center, a world-renowned museum dedicated to the field of sculpture, announces Director Jeremy Strick will retire from his leadership position in June 2024. Mr. Strick’s retirement from the museum field caps off a 40-year career and one in which he has served as Director of the Nasher for 15 of its 20 years, serving as the second-ever leader of the institution.
“On behalf of the Board of Trustees, we extend our heartfelt thanks to Jeremy Strick for his indelible contributions. Jeremy has demonstrated that a museum dedicated to a singular field can be dynamic while advancing scholarship, and experimental while retaining purpose and focus,” said David Haemisegger, Chair of the Nasher’s Board of Trustees. Mr. Haemisegger will lead the international search for Mr. Strick’s successor.
“Serving as Director of the Nasher Sculpture Center has been a tremendous honor and the greatest joy,” said Mr. Strick. “Working with the extraordinary collection assembled by Raymond and Patsy Nasher, in one of the most beautiful museum settings in the world and given exceptional programmatic freedom by our Board of Trustees, our talented and dedicated staff and I were able to build upon this legacy, championing the field of sculpture, and placing the Nasher at the center of essential conversations in Dallas and around the world. I am forever grateful to the many extraordinary artists we have had the honor of celebrating, exhibiting and collecting over the years, and to the Dallas community for its unwavering interest and support. As I look to the future, I expect the Nasher will maintain its leadership in the field of modern and contemporary sculpture, while remaining a treasured place of discovery and enjoyment for visitors from North Texas and beyond.”
Mr. Strick will continue to lead the Nasher through its spring 2024 season, which includes the highly lauded group exhibition Groundswell: Women of Land Art and upcoming solo presentations by Sarah Sze and the Haas Brothers. During this time, he will work in tandem with the Board of Trustees to affect a smooth transition.
Since 2009, Mr. Strick has overseen the Nasher’s exhibitions, operations, collection, and acquisitions.
Building upon the world-renowned Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, which was influenced by the progressive eye of its collectors, the Nasher’s permanent collection has grown in size significantly under Mr. Strick’s tenure, including the landmark acquisition of 24 sculptures by Jean (Hans) Arp in 2023, arguably the single most important gift since the museum’s opening. Other significant acquisitions include 28 works—sculptures and drawings—by Phyllida Barlow, Nicole Eisenman’s much-lauded Sketch for a Fountain (five figures), 2017 (cast 2018-19), five works by Melvin Edwards ranging in date from 1972-2006, two sculptures by Raoul Hague, Nic Nicosia’s bighands, 2010 (enlarged and cast 2020), Simone Leigh’s Kasama, 2020 and Kathleen Ryan’s Jackie, 2021.
As Raymond and Pasty always desired for the collection’s future, representation of women artists has been expanded under Mr. Strick’s leadership through the establishment of the Kaleta A. Doolin Fund for Women Artists in 2015. Among then acquisitions made through the Doolin Fund are Untitled, 1980-83, by Magdalena Abakanowicz, Rearrangeable Rainbow Blocks, 1965, by Judy Chicago, 6 works by Dorothy Dehner, including Low Landscape No. 3, 1961, Field, 1985, by Maren Hassinger, four works by Ana Mendieta, including Untitled, 1985, and two works by Beverly Semmes, including Yellow Pool, 1993.
At the same time, the Nasher’s collection was further expanded with the acquisition of works by artists of color and LGBQT+ artists. Notable artists whose work entered the collection during this time include Xxavier Edward Carter, Liu Wei, Ruben Ochoa, Catalina Ouyang, and lauren woods, among others.
In 2015, Mr. Strick was instrumental in launching the Nasher Prize, an international award presented to a living artist in recognition of their extraordinary impact on the understanding and development of sculpture. Since its inception, the Nasher Prize has become the preeminent artist award in its field. Selected by an international jury of renowned museum directors, curators, artists, and art historians, the Nasher Prize has recognized the following Laureates: Doris Salcedo (2016); Pierre Huyghe (2017); Theaster Gates (2018); Isa Genzken (2019); Michael Rakowitz (2020/21); Nairy Baghramian (2022); Senga Nengudi (2023); and Otobong Nkanga (2025).
The Nasher Prize stands out for its year-long programmatic series designed around each Laureate. Ranging from public events to educational opportunities, the Nasher Prize’s collateral program includes a Graduate Symposium, Laureate Lecture, and roving Dialogues series. Aiming to bring together the brightest voices shaping contemporary sculpture today, Dialogues is held in partnership with prestigious institutions in cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Glasgow, Mexico City and Reykjavik, to expand public awareness and promote scholarly discourse. The next Dialogues will be held at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) in Puerto Rico on November 9, 2023.
Sir Nicholas Serota, Nasher Prize juror, former Director of Tate and current Chair of the Arts Council England, said, “As Jeremy intended, the Nasher Prize has transformed public appreciation of the capacity of contemporary sculpture to raise questions about some of the big issues of our time and has quickly established itself as an award that generates international attention.”
2021 Nasher Prize Laureate Nairy Baghramian shared, “As a Laureate myself, I can underscore how transformative the Nasher Prize is for an artist and to the high level of integrity that Jeremy and his team at the Nasher have instilled in the experience of being a Prize recipient. Jeremy will surely be remembered for his unconditional support of contemporary artists working in sculpture and for prioritizing the medium’s place in art history.”
During Mr. Strick’s tenure, the Nasher launched a program of major retrospectives of modern masters and historical surveys as well as an active international calendar of exhibitions of living artists—emerging and established—some already in the collection, some not yet represented at the times the shows were organized. A number of these exhibitions traveled domestically and internationally, further advancing the Nasher’s reputation and impact.
?Over the years, landmark exhibitions organized by the Nasher include such historical surveys as Return to Earth: Ceramic Sculpture of Fontana, Melotti, Miró, Noguchi, and Picasso 1943-1963 (2013-14), the trailblazing First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone (2018), and Groundswell: Women of Land Art (2023). Major retrospectives of modern and contemporary masters include Melvin Edwards: Five Decades (2015), The Nature of Arp (2018-19), Harry Bertoia: Sculpting Modern Life (2021-22), and Mark di Suvero: Steel Like Paper (2023). Numerous focused shows highlighted work by contemporary artists including presentations of Nairy Baghramian, Phyllida Barlow, Lynda Benglis, David Bates, Carol Bove, Elmgreen & Dragset, Theaster Gates, Katharina Grosse, Roni Horn, Ernesto Neto, Magali Reus, and Joel Shapiro, among many others.
In 2014, in celebration of the Nasher’s 10th anniversary, the Nasher Sculpture Center presented the public exhibition, Nasher XChange, which took the museum beyond its walls and into the community in honor of Raymond and Patsy Nasher’s enduring commitment to make great art accessible to all. Ten contemporary artists – Lara Almarcegui, Rachel Harrison, Alfredo Jaar, Charles Long, Liz Larner, Rick Lowe, Vicki Meek, Ruben Ochoa, Ugo Rondinone, and the Good/Bad Art Collective – were newly commissioned to create site-responsive works of art for 10 public spaces throughout the city of Dallas. Nasher XChange demonstrated the radical and diverse perspectives of artists working today, while highlighting the disparate geographies of the city – geographical, historical, and social.
During the pandemic, Mr. Strick and his dedicated team once again ensured the public had access to art during a period of intense isolation and in support of North Texas artists. For more than 14 weeks, while the Nasher was closed to the public, 11 early- to mid-career artists were exhibited in the museum’s glass-enclosed vestibule for the outside world to see. The program, entitled Nasher Public, proved so successful that a new model for public art was established throughout the city to continue to showcase the work of North Texas artists. Since the fall of 2020, 23 artists and two art collectives have participated in the initiative, including artist, curator and veteran activist Vicki Meek, whose public project “Urban Historical Reclamation and Recognition” assembled a collective of local artists and historians to document and memorialize a community within Dallas – the Tenth Street Historic Freedman’s Town in Oak Cliff – that had been historically underrepresented in public history efforts.
A hallmark of Mr. Strick’s approach in all the programs and events developed during his tenure was the active engagement of artists—local, national, and international—who Mr. Strick understood as an essential constituency—partners and audience for the museum in all that it endeavored to achieve.
Prior to becoming Director of the Nasher, Mr. Strick served as Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, California, from 1999 to 2008. During his tenure, MOCA organized numerous landmark survey exhibitions including The Experimental Exercise of Freedom: Lygia Clark, Gego, Mathias Goeritz, Hélio Oiticica, and Mira Schendel, A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968, Ecstasy: In and About Altered States; Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music since 1900, and WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution, along with numerous monographic shows of artists including Emory Douglas, Marlene Dumas, Lucien Freud, Douglas Gordon, Liz Larner, Martin Kippenberger, Barbara Kruger, Takashi Murakami, Laura Owens, Robert Rauschenberg, Lorna Simpson, Robert Smithson, Cosima von Bonin, Andy Warhol, Laurence Weiner and Andrea Zittel, among many others. Under his leadership, MOCA’s membership increased by over 80% to become the largest of any museum of contemporary art in North America, while the museum’s permanent collection grew similarly, through numerous major gifts and purchases.
Mr. Strick previously served as a senior curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, and held curatorial positions at the Saint Louis Art Museum and National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. He pursued graduate studies in Fine Arts at Harvard University and received his Bachelor of Arts (History of Art) from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1977.
He has written and lectured extensively on modern and contemporary art, including as a contributor to the exhibition catalogue A Century of Modern Sculpture: The Patsy and Raymond Nasher Collection, presented by the Dallas Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. in 1987.
About the Nasher Sculpture Center
Founded in 2003 by the late collector Raymond Nasher and located in the heart of the Dallas Arts District, the Nasher Sculpture Center is home to the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, one of the finest collections of modern and contemporary sculpture in the world, featuring more than 500 masterpieces by Brancusi, Calder, de Kooning, di Suvero, Giacometti, Basquiat, Hepworth, LeWitt, Matisse, Miró, Moore, Picasso, Rodin, Serra, and Shapiro, among others.
For more information, visit www.NasherSculptureCenter.org.
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