Kathleen Goncharov, a curator whose work included organizing reveals for Simply Above Midtown gallery, died at her house in Boca Raton, Florida, of pure causes on December 31. She was 73 years previous.
Goncharov served as senior curator on the Boca Raton Museum of Artwork in Florida from 2012 till she retired in 2025. She had beforehand labored as a curator at establishments all through the US, curated exhibitions from Rio de Janeiro to Bologna and Rome, and served because the commissioner of the US Pavilion for the Venice Biennale in 2003, which that yr took the type of an exhibition of Fred Wilson, “Communicate of Me as I Am,” in regards to the historic and modern function of Black individuals in Venice for the American pavilion.
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“It was an important pleasure working with Kathleen Goncharov throughout my 11-year tenure on the Boca Raton Museum of Artwork,” mentioned Irvin Lippman, who was the manager director from 2014 till 2025. “She had a wonderful curatorial eye that underscored my favourite remark ever made about our artwork installations — that our museum had soul, and this was attributable to Kathy’s skills as a curator. She possessed a pure aptitude for bringing exhibitions to life, in her singular fashion that was unmatched. On the museum, she curated greater than 30 exhibitions that includes many notable artists, together with: Tony Oursler, Whitfield Lovell, Phyllis Galembo, Maren Hassinger, José Alvarez (D.O.P.A.), Charles McGill, and Trine Lise Nedreaas, amongst others. She was additionally an important pal who will likely be vastly missed.”
Born in 1952 in Monroe, Michigan, Goncharov began out her profession in New York in 1980 as curator at Linda Goode Bryant’s Simply Above Midtown (JAM) Gallery, the place she organized performances and exhibitions. She was director of exhibitions at New York public artwork presenter Inventive Time from 1983 to 1986.
She went on to be artwork curator on the New Faculty in New York Metropolis from 1987 to 2001, constructing an intensive assortment and organizing public applications on the Vera Checklist Heart for Artwork and Politics. Throughout that point, she additionally organized Wilson’s 1992 presentation on the fourth Cairo Worldwide Biennale, “Re:Claiming Egypt,” and curated a presentation on the seventh Triennale in New Delhi, India, in 1991. She was public artwork curator at MIT from 2001 to 2003, overseeing the varsity’s percent-for-art program and organizing the Venice exhibition.
From 2003 to 2005 she served as adjunct curator of up to date artwork on the Nasher Museum of Artwork at Duke College in Durham, North Carolina, and from 2007 to 2011 she was government director at Brodsky Heart for Modern Editions, at Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Among the many many artists she supported over the course of her lengthy profession had been El Anatsui, Lynda Benglis, Petah Coyne, Grand Grasp Flash, Chitra Ganesh, David Hammons, Mona Hatoum, Barkley Hendricks, Isaac Julien, William Kentridge, Hew Locke, Thomas Nozkowski, Lorraine O’Grady, Tony Oursler, Martin Puryear, Duke Riley, Pat Steir, Mickalene Thomas, and Carrie Mae Weems.
Goncharov was additionally, behind the scenes, a working artist for some 40 years. Her debut exhibition, “Above and Under,” appeared at New York’s Olympia gallery in 2022. “Goncharov factors to artists comparable to Giotto, Duccio, Fra Angelico, Piero della Francesco, Masaccio, and particularly the eccentric types and colours of the Sienese painters comparable to Giovanni di Paolo, Sassetta, Grasp of the Osservanza, Sano di Pietro, and others—who approached spiritual subjectivity in their very own distinctive vogue—as her central inspirations,” wrote the gallery in press supplies.
Goncharov is survived by her longtime associate, poet Charles Doria, her sister Janet Sterling and her sister’s husband Joseph Sterling, and nieces Ann Goff, Amy Sterling, and Emily Sterling, and their households; and by her brother Earl Shew, his spouse Sharon Shew, and nephew Stephen Shew, and their household.
