New director for Menil Collection - Artworld - Brief Article

The Menil Collection in Houston has selected Josef Helfenstein as its new director. Since 2000, he has been director of the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he also teaches in the school of art and design. A scholar of modern and contemporary art, he was head of the Paul Klee Foundation's nine-volume catalogue raisonne project. Prior to the Krannert, Helfenstein, who was born in Lucerne, Switzerland, spent 17 years at the Kunstmuseum Bern, home to the Klee Foundation. From 1988 to 2000 he was chief curator of the prints and drawings department, and from 1995 to 2000 he also served as associate director. Helfenstein assumes his new post in January. He succeeds Ned Rifkin, who is now head of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., and director of the international art museums division at the Smithsonian.

Menil board president Louisa Stude Sarofim told the New York Times that the museum is looking to grow. She recently gave the institution a series of 188 works on paper by Ellsworth Kelly titled "Tablet." Sarofim said that plans are under way to create a separate drawings institute on the Menil campus, which would house the gift, estimated to be worth $4.5 million, and other works on paper.

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