Fralin Museum of Art announces two curatorial appointments

The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia has named Laura Minton curator of exhibitions.

Minton joins the Fralin from Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. A senior member of the curatorial team, Minton’s responsibilities at the Fralin include building a comprehensive national and international exhibitions schedule and curating rigorous scholarly projects that provide a foundation for transdisciplinary and socially engaged discourse. Minton, who reports directly to the museum’s J.Sanford Miller Family Director and chief curator, began at the Fralin on Oct. 21, 2019.

Minton expands a curatorial department at the Fralin that includes Hannah Cattarin, who was also recently promoted to assistant curator. Cattarin served as curatorial assistant at the museum prior to her promotion.

“Laura Minton and Hannah Cattarin are deeply engaged in the values of inclusion, excellence and diversity that are central to the Fralin’s mission,” said Matthew McLendon, the museum’s J. Sanford Miller Family Director. “I look forward to collaborating with both of them on a range of dynamic and articulate museum initiatives that will foster meaningful conversations with UVA’s students, faculty and broader community, about the world we share.”

Minton is a Ph.D. candidate in art history at the University of Kansas, where she received her M.A. in art history. She graduated cum laude from Wake Forest University with a B.A. in art history and was awarded a 2019-2020 Tyson Scholar fellowship at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Minton was previously curatorial assistant in the department of prints and drawings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; curator of collections and exhibitions at the Western Carolina University Fine Art Museum in Cullowhee, North Carolina; and has held several positions at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas.

Among the special exhibitions Minton has curated and co-curated are Fear and Wonder: Sublime Landscapes on Paper, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2019); Always Greener: Seeing and Seeking Suburbia, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2018-19); Willie Cole: Soles and Boards, WCU Fine Art Museum, Cullowhee, North Carolina (2018); Print Plus One: Beyond the Glass Matrix, WCU Fine Art Museum, Cullowhee, North Carolina (2017); and Material World: Adornments from Around the Globe at the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas (2014-15).

Cattarin received her M.A. in art history and theory from the University of Essex, Colchester, in Essex, UK, and her B.A. in art history from Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. Prior to her time at the Fralin, she served as a curatorial assistant in the UB Art Galleries at the University of Buffalo; research associate and collections manager at Tony Conrad Archives in Buffalo; documentation assistant at the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (ESCALA) in Colchester, UK; and registrar at the Castellani Art Museum of Niagara University in Lewiston, New York.

In her new role at the Fralin, Cattarin oversees gallery rotations and curates exhibitions drawn from its permanent holdings. Most recently, Cattarin reinstalled the collection to include more women artists and organized Otherwise, an exhibition that examines the influence LGBTQ+ culture has had on modern and contemporary art, on view at the Fralin through Jan. 5, 2020.