Cornell Fine Arts Museum Appoints New Consulting Curator

Rollins welcomes Abigail Ross Goodman as the Cornell Fine Arts Museum’s new consulting curator. She will work closely with director Ena Heller and curator Gisela Carbonell on strategic partnerships, curatorial planning, and as a member of the Museum’s National Council, set to launch this year.

Goodman is co-founder and principal of Goodman Taft, a curatorial and advisory firm with a focus on post-war and contemporary art, and brings to the role more than 20 years of experience as a contemporary gallerist, independent curator, and advisor. Prior to founding Goodman Taft, she was the owner/director of the Judi Rotenberg Gallery in Boston, where she built a dynamic program of emerging and established artists. Since 2010, she has collaborated on several exhibitions and public art installations, including the 2012 deCordova Biennial at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

In the past five years at CFAM, Goodman co-curated the exhibitions Fractured Narratives: A Strategy to Engage and Time as Landscape: Inquiries of Art and Science. Her contributions to Rollins include her role as the curator of the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art since its inception in 2013 and editor of its Art For Rollins catalogs.

“I could not be happier that Abigail has accepted a larger involvement with our museum,” says Bruce A. Beal Director Ena Heller. “Her extraordinary expertise in contemporary art and her deep and thoughtful commitment to the Alfond Collection will help reposition our museum as we create the strategy for the next phase in CFAM’s institutional history.”

Goodman—who began her career as a student intern at a teaching museum—is excited to collaborate more closely with Heller and Carbonell as they continue to develop the rich platform for inquiry that CFAM offers students, faculty, and its broader audience.