Features

Alumni Profile: Lynn Zelevansky, B.F.A. '71

Alumna Lynn Zelevansky, B.F.A. '71, one of the world's leading curators of contemporary art, assumed her new position as director of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh this summer after 14 years at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The Pratt photography major had launched her career as a curatorial assistant at the Museum of Modern Art, N.Y. in 1987 and has since curated numerous exhibitions.

"Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form, 1940s to 1970s," an exhibition she organized at LACMA in 2004, won the first place award for best thematic museum show nationally that year from the U.S. branch of the International Association of Art Critics. "Museums need to find creative, meaningful ways to redefine what they do to fit the 21st century," says Zelevansky, who mounted a major exhibition of contemporary Korean art at LACMA this summer in response to the Korean presence in Los Angeles.

Following graduation, Zelevansky began working as a fine arts photographer. "The photography department at Pratt was one of the best things that ever happened to me," she recalls. "My most memorable professor was Philip Perkis; the discourse around pictures was fascinating."

But Zelevansky soon discovered that she preferred writing about photographs to making them and transitioned her career accordingly. "At some point I was a teaching adjunct at three different schools and writing about seven reviews a month," she says. "I decided to go to graduate school in order to become fully employable." Before pursuing her studies at NYU's Institute for Fine Arts, Zelevansky taught photography and criticism classes at Pratt. She has published widely and taught at universities on both the East and West coasts.

Her advice to young artists: "It's hard to sustain the artist's life. Meet other artists and become part of the dialogue. It's a community like any other that respects and pays attention to those who give back to it."