The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) has announced the appointment of Daniel Kurt Ackermann, PhD as the Director of Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens. The role has been vacant since the retirement of longtime director Bonnie Campbell last fall.
Daniel Kurt Ackermann
In a press release, Gary Tinterow, Director and Margaret Alkek Williams Chair of the MFAH, commented, “Daniel Ackermann’s expertise in material culture of the American South, and his enthusiasm for bringing a thoughtful range of historical perspectives to the public, make him the ideal person to lead Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens. I look forward to working with Daniel to expand upon Bonnie Campbell’s many initiatives, which have introduced Bayou Bend to an ever-widening audience of Houstonians and visitors to our region.”
Mr. Ackermann holds a PhD in Art History from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an MA in Architectural History from The University of Virginia, and a BA in History from The College of William and Mary. Most recently, he served as the Chief Curator and Director of Collections, Research & Archaeology at the Old Salem Museums & Gardens and The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA). From 2007 to 2020 he held the position of Associate Curator at MESDA. Prior to that he was the Tiffany & Co. Foundation Curatorial Intern in American Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and during college he worked for Heritage Auctions in Dallas.
Works by David Hammons, Theaster Gates, and Renée Green exhibited alongside the work of free Black potter David Jarbour inside The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts’s Whitehall Plantation Dining room.
In his role at Old Salem and MESDA, Mr. Ackermann led a team of curators and researchers in caring for the collections, conceiving exhibitions, developing research and resources, and publishing print and online materials. Under his direction, the institution presented Rivers of Ink, Mountains of Type: Maps at Work in the Early American South, a show that used early Southern maps to address issues such as colonization, war, enslavement, science, and education; House Party: R.S.V.P. B.Y.O.B, a site-specific exhibition co-curated with artist Michael J. Bramwell that
juxtaposed the work of contemporary Black artists like Theaster Gates, Glenn Ligon, and Kara Walker with work by 18th- and 19th-century Black craftspeople; and Fire+Clay: Contemporary Conversations, which featured works by ceramicists Michelle Erickson, David F. Mack, and David Stuempfle.
Mr. Ackermann remarked, “I’m honored to follow in the footsteps of Bonnie Campbell and David Warren [Bayou Bend’s former directors] and look forward to building on their accomplishments. Thanks to Ima Hogg’s vision and generosity, Bayou Bend is home to one of America’s great decorative arts and botanical collections. As part of the MFAH, Bayou Bend is a unique site for the study of American decorative arts and material culture in a national and global context.”
Mr. Ackermann will join the museum in July.
