Dina Deitsch to serve as director and chief curator of Tufts University art galleries

BOSTON and MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (May 8, 2017) – Tufts University has named curator Dina Deitsch as its new director and chief curator of university art galleries, overseeing operations at the Tufts University Art Gallery on the Medford/Somerville campus and the exhibition spaces at the Boston campus of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (SMFA at Tufts).

Deitsch will be a key contributor in developing the university's relationship with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston through collaborative exhibitions planning and public programming, while helping to inaugurate a new art-centered era at the university.

She will also oversee the university's art collections to ensure professional stewardship of the works on display and in storage. The permanent art collection at Tufts includes pieces from Auguste Rodin, John Singer Sargent, Louise Nevelson, Helen Frankenthaler, Isamu Nogushi and Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, among others.

"It is with great excitement that we welcome Dina to our community," said Nancy Bauer, dean of the SMFA at Tufts. "Dina's extensive curatorial, scholarly, and administrative experience in both museum and academic settings makes her an ideal choice to lead the Tufts and SMFA galleries and to oversee our new relationship with the Museum of Fine Arts."

Deitsch joins Tufts from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, where she was the John R. and Barbara Robinson Family interim director for this past academic year. She is a former faculty member of the SMFA at Tufts in the MFA graduate program, and at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Until 2015 Deitsch worked as curator of contemporary art at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. At the renowned museum, she organized one-person exhibitions with notable contemporary artists and numerous group exhibitions, including most recently "Walden, revisited."

"I am thrilled to join Tufts and the SMFA at this unprecedented moment. Merging the two galleries in Medford and Boston, each with their own extensive histories of powerful programming, presents an opportunity to rethink the ways in which the university gallery, as a form, can operate in and beyond the campus," says Deitsch. "I look forward to working with faculty, students, and the administrations here and at the Museum of Fine Arts – as well as the Boston community at large – in deepening and strengthening the presence of art throughout the entirety of Tufts University campuses."

Deitsch received a Master of Arts in art history from Williams College, and undertook graduate work at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Her writing has been featured in Phaidon Press's "Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography," "Art Papers," "C Magazine," MIT's "Thresholds," and "Art Journal Online," among others.

Deitsch has also held curatorial positions at the Williams College Museum of Art and, very briefly, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She is currently guest curating "Common Exchange," a series of public art performances and installation in and around Cambridge Common in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Tufts galleries are currently showing exhibits such as "CODED_COUTURE," about how digital technology can intersect with fashion; "Floating Artifacts," an examination how human interaction with the oceans impacts ecology by SMFA at Tufts alumna Evelyn Rydz; and the SMFA at Tufts' Year End Show, featuring works from the class of 2017 and award-winning pieces. Tufts' art community will continue to celebrate this year's graduating art students with additional shows this spring including the large-scale exhibition of the graduating Master of Fine Arts students at Boston's historic Cyclorama building this May. 

To learn more about how Tufts University supports the arts, please visit: https://www.tufts.edu/about/arts

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About Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts

Tufts University, located on campuses in Boston, Medford/Somerville and Grafton, Massachusetts, and in Talloires, France, is recognized among the premier research universities in the United States. Tufts enjoys a global reputation for academic excellence and for the preparation of students as leaders in a wide range of professions. A growing number of innovative teaching and research initiatives span all Tufts campuses, and collaboration among the faculty and students in the undergraduate, graduate and professional programs across the university's schools is widely encouraged. The School of the Museum of Fine Arts was established in 1876 as part of the Museum of Fine Arts' mission to educate through the arts. After a more than 70-year relationship with Tufts, it officially became part of Tufts' School of Arts and Sciences in July 2016. The SMFA at Tufts is extraordinary in being affiliated with a world class museum and part of a major research university.