Suzanne Muchnic introduces LACMA’s new two-department curator to Los Angeles:

In a move designed to increase public access to its works on paper, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has hired a curator to head two departments: photography and prints and drawings. Britt Salvesen, director and chief curator of the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, will assume the new position in mid-October. […]

But LACMA does not intend to merge the two departments or consolidate their collections. The immediate goal is to build storage and classroom space that will make the artworks available to a broader audience. The museum also plans to hire a curatorial specialist in Old Master prints and drawings to round out its staff. […]

A historian of modern art and photography, Salvesen earned a master’s degree at the University of London’s Courtauld Institute of Art and a doctorate at the University of Chicago. She worked in the publications department of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1994 to 2003 and spent the following year at the Milwaukee Art Museum as associate curator of prints, drawings and photographs. She has made her professional home at the Center for Creative Photography since 2004, moving up from curator to interim director to director and chief curator.