The Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University in Houston has announced the appointment of two Associate Curators, Ylinka Barotto and Frauke V. Josenhans. Both curators will be responsible for developing, organizing and executing visual art exhibitions and projects for the Moody and Rice Public Art.

“We are delighted to welcome Ylinka Barotto and Frauke Josenhans to our dynamic team” said Alison Weaver, the Suzanne Deal Booth Executive Director of the Moody Center for the Arts. “We’re looking forward to the creative contributions these two talented women will make in support of the Moody’s mission to foster interdisciplinary conversation through the arts. Through projects that engage both the Moody and Rice Public Art, we have the opportunity to broaden the conversation across fields of research and to engage diverse communities, both on and off campus.”

Ylinka Barotto joins the Moody from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum where she most recently served as Assistant Curator. She worked on major modern and postwar retrospective exhibitions such as Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting (2015),  Moholy-Nagy: Future Present (2016), and Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim (2017). Barotto also assisted on contemporary exhibitions such as Danh Vo: Take My Breath Away (2018), and Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection (2019–20). Barotto contributed to the Guggenheim’s Summer of Know series, moderating conversations between contemporary artists, activists, and journalists to explore pressing social and political issues. In addition, Barotto was involved with shaping the Guggenheim permanent collection through acquisitions of emerging artists such as Mounira Al Solh, Meriem Bennani, Sheree Hovsepian, Baseera Khan, and Frida Orupabo through the Young Collectors Council. Barotto received an MA in curatorial studies at Accademia delle Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, Italy and has completed coursework towards an MA in Art History at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY).

Frauke V. Josenhans was formerly the Horace W. Goldsmith Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Yale University Art Gallery. She curated exhibitions such as Everything Is Dada (2016), Modern Art from the Middle East (2017), and Artists in Exile: Expressions of Loss and Hope (2017), as well as organized numerous rotating installations of the modern and contemporary art galleries, worked on the acquisition of works by contemporary artists, and mentored students. Prior to Yale, she worked at several other cultural institutions, both in Europe and in the U.S., notably at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where she helped organize various international loan exhibitions, as well as curated diverse collection-based exhibitions. She has authored and contributed to numerous English, French, and German art-historical journals, books, and catalogues, focusing on global modern and contemporary art. Josenhans has graduate degrees in art history and museology from the Sorbonne and the École du Louvre in Paris, and a Ph.D. in art history from the Aix-Marseille Université in France.

Inaugurated in February 2017, the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University is a state-of-the-art, non-collecting institution dedicated to transdisciplinary collaboration among the arts, sciences, and humanities. The 50,000-square foot facility, designed by acclaimed Los Angeles-based architect Michael Maltzan, serves as an experimental platform for creating and presenting works in all disciplines, a flexible teaching space to encourage new modes of making and a forum for creative partnerships with visiting national and international artists. The Moody is free and open to the public year-round.

More info: moody.rice.edu