Paul Schimmel
Paul Schimmel has been the Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), since 1990, and previously served as the Chief Curator of the Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA (1981-89), as well as the Curator (1975-77) and Senior Curator (1977-78) of the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. He has won numerous awards, including two awards from the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC), and six awards from the International Association of Art Critics (AICA). Schimmel has organized major one-person retrospectives for artists Chris Burden, Willem De Kooning, Takashi Murakami, Laura Owens, Sigmar Polke, Charles Ray, and Robert Rauschenberg, and significant thematic exhibitions such as The Interpretive Link: Abstract Surrealism into Abstract Expressionism, Works on Paper, 1938-1948 (1987), The Figurative Fifties: New York Figurative Expressionism (1988), Hand-Painted Pop: American Art in Transition 1955–62 (1992), Helter Skelter: LA Art in the 1990s (1992), Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979 (1999), Ecstasy: In and About Altered States (2006), and Collection: MOCA’s First 30 Years (2010). He has served as a National Endowment for the Arts panelist and currently serves as a member of the Contemporary Art Collection Acquisition Committee for the Fundacio “la Caixa.” In 2010, Schimmel was appointed by President Obama to serve on the Committee for the Preservation of the White House. Schimmel is currently organizing the upcoming exhibitions Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981 (2011), Painting the Void: 1949-1962 (2012), and Richard Hamilton: A Retrospective (2013).