Dan Nadel, a critic who has introduced mainstream audiences to off-kilter artists who long existed at the margins of American art history, has joined the curatorial team of the Whitney Museum in New York, where he will now serve as a curator in the drawings and prints department.
His appointment came about a month before the opening of his latest project, a wide-ranging Whitney show opening this September called “Sixties Surreal.” That show will chart Surrealism’s influence on American art produced between 1958 and 1972.
Earlier this year, Nadel received acclaim for his biography of Robert Crumb, an artist whose comics approach American culture with humor and deliberate strangeness. But within the art world, Nadel has been praised widely for organizing exhibitions that centered around figures who have not fully received their due.
For New York’s Karma gallery in 2018, for example, Nadel organized an exhibition of Gertrude Abercrombie. It was the first New York show for Abercrombie, a Chicago-based painter whose work shared affinities with Surrealism, in 1952, and after that exhibition, surveys followed and the market for her work swelled.
Other shows by Nadel have focused on members of the Hairy Who group, Red Grooms, Kathy Butterly, and more.
He was formerly a curator at large at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. He has contributed to magazines such as Art in America, ARTnews’s sister publication.
In a statement, Nadel said, “Drawings and prints are my first loves and continuing obsessions, so the chance to dive into the collection and continue collaborating across the Museum is thrilling. I’m grateful for the opportunity.”
Alongside his appointment, the Whitney also announced that it had named Jennie Goldstein curator of the collection and Roxanne Smith assistant curator of the collection.
