New appointments

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) announces new curatorial appointments with the addition of Ryan N. Dennis as Senior Curator and Director of Public Initiatives, along with the promotions of Rebecca Matalon to Senior Curator and Patricia Restrepo as Curator. Dennis will join the Museum in June.

As a non-collecting museum, CAMH is focused on the art of our time and realizing projects that create unexpected and unforgettable contemporary art experiences. For 74 years, CAMH has introduced leading-edge artists to Houston, welcomed new audiences to contemporary art, and presented exhibitions that define global art history. Dennis and Matalon join a rich lineage of CAMH curatorial leaders—including Valerie Cassel Oliver, Toby Kamps, and Paul Schimmel—to lead the Museum’s exhibitions, which often tour major venues nationally. Restrepo will expand her focus to include survey exhibitions and continue the Museum’s legacy of catalytic solo shows.

In addition to Museum exhibitions, CAMH has significantly broadened its curatorial reach over the last three years through local partnerships with community organizations such as Houston Freedmen’s Town Conservancy and Houston Independent School District. CAMH additionally serves as a curatorial leader for civic scale projects throughout the US, which connect the Museum’s artist relationships and curatorial expertise to implement integrated public art initiatives that benefit local contexts and audiences. With years of experience working in direct collaboration with diverse communities, Dennis will provide curatorial vision and initiate opportunities and support for artists working beyond the walls of the Museum.

“CAMH is thrilled to recognize the extraordinary talents of our curatorial team and expand upon them,” says Executive Director Hesse McGraw. “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. Ryan is a leading national curatorial voice whose work uniquely bridges artists and communities with institutions. Rebecca and Patricia have brought impactful and inspiring exhibitions to CAMH, like Garrett Bradley: American Rhapsody and Slowed and Throwed: Records of the City Through Mutated Lenses, respectively. CAMH’s curatorial team will present groundbreaking exhibitions inside and beyond our walls.”

Ryan N. Dennis currently serves as the Chief Curator and Artistic Director of the Center for Art & Public Exchange (CAPE) at the Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA). Most recently, Dennis co-curated, with Jessica Bell Brown, the critically acclaimed exhibition, A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, currently on view at Brooklyn Museum and traveling nationwide through 2024. Her recent projects include Leonardo Drew’s City in the Garden (2020), Betye Saar: Call & Response (2021), and Dusti Bonge: Piercing the Inner Wall (2021). Before joining MMA, she served as the Curator and Programs Director at Project Row Houses (PRH) in Houston, where she worked with over 100 BIPOC artists to exhibit their work in PRH’s shotgun houses.

Rebecca Matalon is Senior Curator at CAMH, where she has organized solo exhibitions for artists including Garrett Bradley and Mariah Garnett, as well as the two-person show Wild Life: Elizabeth Murray & Jessi Reaves (2021). These widely celebrated exhibitions toured to The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, The Momentary, and the Carnegie Museum of Art, among others. Additionally, she organized the Houston presentations of Cauleen Smith: We Already Have What We Need (2021) and Diane Severin Nguyen: IF REVOLUTION IS A SICKNESS (2022). Matalon is currently working on the first U.S. solo museum presentation of work by Brooklyn-based artist and filmmaker Jordan Strafer, among other projects.

Patricia Restrepo is Curator at CAMH, where she has worked since 2014. A native Houstonian, Restrepo co-curated Slowed and Throwed: Records of the City through Mutated Lenses (2020–2021), an interdisciplinary exhibition orbiting around DJ Screw’s process of material manipulation. She curated Will Boone: The Highway Hex (2019)and Stage Environment: You Didn’t Have to Be There (2018). She is organizing the first mid-career survey of work by Houston and Los Angeles-based artist Vincent Valdez, co-curated with Denise Markonish of MASS MoCA.

Read more here.