The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston has appointed Ryan N. Dennis as Senior Curator and Director of Public Initiatives. Additionally, the museum announced the promotions of Rebecca Matalon and Patricia Restrepo.
In a press release, CAMH’s Executive Director, Hesse McGraw, stated, “CAMH is thrilled to recognize the extraordinary talents of our curatorial team and expand upon them. Ryan Dennis’s 10-year tenure in Houston at Project Row Houses and the Menil Collection is legendary, and it’s an honor to welcome her back to the city through this role.”
Ryan N. Dennis. Photo by Charles A. Smith.
Ms. Dennis is currently the Chief Curator and Artistic Director of the Center for Art & Public Exchange (CAPE) at the Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA). In this role she organized Leonardo Drew’s City in the Garden (2020), Betye Saar: Call & Response (2021), Dusti Bonge: Piercing the Inner Wall (2021), and CAPE artist-in-residence Shani Peter’s Collective Care for Black Mothers and Caretakers (2022) with the local Jackson community. Most recently, Ms. Dennis and Jessica Bell Brown co-curated A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, which is currently on view at Brooklyn Museum and will be traveling nationwide through 2024.
Prior to her role at MMA, Ms. Dennis served as the Curator and Programs Director at Project Row Houses (PRH). At PRH she organized and co-organized more than 12 Artist Rounds, working with over 100 BIPOC artists and showcasing artists like Simone Leigh, Autumn Knight, and Otabenga Jones & Associates, among many others. She also led the creation of the 2:2:2 Exchange Residency Program with the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago and established Project/Site, a temporary, site-specific, commission-based public art program. In 2017, Ms. Dennis launched the PRH Fellowship with the Center for Art and Social Engagement at the University of Houston’s Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts.
Ms. Dennis holds a Master’s in Arts and Cultural Management from Pratt Institute, with a focus in Curatorial Practice. She was a Class of 2019 Fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership, a mentoring and training program for museum curators. Ms. Dennis and Evan Garza co-curated the 2021 Texas Biennial. Today, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts also announced that Ms. Dennis is among its four new elected board members. The Warhol Foundation funds many grants, including the Idea Fund, which is administered by Houston organizations DiverseWorks, Aurora Picture Show, and PRH.
Ms. Dennis’ writings have appeared in catalogs and journals, including Prospect.3 Notes for Now, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, and The Studio Museum in Harlem’s Studio Magazine. She edited PRH’s 2018 book, Collective Creative Actions: Project Row Houses at 25, and contributed to In Rehearsal: Autumn Knight, the first monograph of artist, published by the Krannert Art Museum in 2019.
Rebecca Matalon. Photo by Bria Lauren.
Along with Ms. Dennis’ appointment, CAMH has promoted Rebecca Matalon to the position of Senior Curator. In her work at CAMH, Ms. Matalon has organized solo shows for Garrett Bradley and Mariah Garnett, as well as the two-person exhibition Wild Life: Elizabeth Murray & Jessi Reaves (2021). These exhibitions went on to tour other institutions, including The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, The Momentary, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. Currently, Ms. Matalon is developing the first U.S. solo museum exhibition of work by Jordan Strafer, a Brooklyn-based artist and filmmaker. Prior to to her work at CAMH, Ms. Matalon served as the Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Patricia Restrepo. Photo by Karen Navarro.
Ms. Restrepo, a native Houstonian who has worked at CAMH since 2014, has also been promoted to Curator. Among her many contributions to the museum, Ms. Restrepo co-curated Slowed and Throwed: Records of the City through Mutated Lenses (2020–2021), an exhibition exploring DJ Screw’s process of material manipulation, which featured artists including Jamal Cyrus, Shana Hoehn, Tomashi Jackson, Liss LaFleur, and Sondra Perry. She has also curated Will Boone: The Highway Hex, which was the artist’s first solo museum exhibition; and For Stage Environment: You Didn’t Have to Be There (2018), which explored the CAMH’s then 70-year history of supporting performances by artists, including Laurie Anderson, James Lee Byars, Joan Jonas, Autumn Knight, and Robert Rauschenberg. She is currently working with Denise Markonish of MASS MoCA to organize the first mid-career survey of work by Houston and Los Angeles-based artist Vincent Valdez.
