The hires are welcome—and long overdue. Associate curator Kristen Hileman left the Hirshhorn in 2009 to head up the contemporary art department at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Her departure left a huge void in the D.C. gallery scene, where she was greatly loved for her enthusiastic participation in juries, panels, and artist talks. Few other curators from Federal City—the National Portrait Gallery’s Anne Goodyear being one of them—show the same spirit of volunteerism in D.C. I’ll put the question to Budak, Ho, and Yoshitake now—can any of y’all fill Hileman’s shoes?

The Tate Modern has appointed Dr. Achim Borchardt-Hume as head of exhibitions. Borchardt-Hume is currently the chief curator at the Whitechapel Gallery and was previously curator of modern and contemporary art at the Tate Modern, director of the Barbican Art Gallery, and exhibition organizer at the Serpentine Gallery.

Deborah Cullen has been appointed the director and chief curator of the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University. Cullen director of curatorial programs at El Museo del Barrio. The Gallery will move in 2016 from Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus to the Lenfest Center for the Arts at the Manhattanville campus.

Sonya Rhie Quintanilla has been named the new curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Quintanilla was previously curator of Asian art at the San Diego Museum of Art and will succeed Stan Czuma who retired after 33 years in 2005.

Barbara Buhler Lynes has resigned from her position as curator of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and director of the Museum’s Research Center. Lynes is a foremost scholar in the life and art of Georgia O’Keeffe, publishing many books and essays related to her work. Prior to her tenure at the museum, Lynes was a Professor of Art History at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Montgomery College, Dartmouth College, and Vanderbilt University.

Carol Robbins has retired after 47 years from the Dallas Museum of Art. During her nearly 50 years at the museum, Robbins has served as Curator of Textiles, Curator of New World and Pacific Cultures and in 2006 was appointed the Ellen and Harry S. Parker III Curator of the Arts of the Americas and the Pacific.

Art Historian Daniel H. Weiss and current president of Lafayette College, has been selected as president of Haverford College starting July 2013.

Margi Conrads has been named the Deputy Director of Art and Research at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Conrads is currently the Samuel Sosland Senior Curator of American Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo. Conrads received her doctorate from the City University of New York Graduate Center and is the editor and primary author of the catalogue of the museum’s American painting collection.

The Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, MI has named Lisa Melandri as the director. Melandri graduated with a degree in art history from Harvard University and previously served as artistic director for the Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design of Philadelphia and deputy director for exhibitions and programs at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in California.

English art critic, scholar and painter, John Golding has died at 82. Formerly a faculty member of the Courtauld Institute of Art, Golding is possibly best known for his influential book, “Cubism: A History and an Analysis 1907-1914″ first published in 1959. Though he was a leading scholar in Cubism, he was quoted in 1994 in The Guardian as saying:

I continue to enjoy looking at Cubist pictures as much as I ever did. But I have come increasingly to realize that I do not really understand them, and I am not sure that anyone else does either.

Paola Morsiani, currently curator of contemporary art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, has been named director of the Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College. Morsiani was born in Venice, Italy and received her Laurea in art history and criticism from the University of Padua in Italy before continuing on for a MA in Arts Administration from New York University.

A resolute high Modernist, he was out of sympathy with many of the aesthetic waves that came after the great achievements of the New York School, notably Pop (“a very great disaster”), Conceptual art (“scrapbook art”) and postmodernism (“modernism with a sneer, a giggle, modernism without any animating faith in the nobility and pertinence of its cultural mandate”).

Alejandro Zaera-Polo has been selected as the dean of Princeton University’s School of Architecture. Zaera-Polo has been a visiting lecturer in architecture at Princeton since 2008. On top of his work at Princeton, Zaera-Polo is also the Berlage Chair at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the Norman R. Foster Visiting Professorship of Architectural Design at Yale University. Alejandro Zaera-Polo will succeed Stan Allen, the dean since 2002, who will return to full-time teaching and architectural design.

Joel Smith has been appointed the first curator of photography at the Morgan Library & Museum. Smith has been working at Princeton University Art Museum since 2005 and was named Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography there in 2011.

Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, Canada has named Gaëtane Verna as director. Verna was previously director and chief curator at the Musée d’art de Joliette in Lanadaudière, Québec.

Sotheby’s has appointed Ryoichi Hirano as International Senior Specialist for Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art and Deputy Managing Director, Sotheby’s Japan. Hirano is the former head of the art gallery Hirano Kotoken and gallery director of the Yayoi Gallery in Tokyo.

Artforum reports that the Tel Aviv Museum of Art appointed longtime Israel Museum chief curator Suzanne Landau as its director and chief curator. “This announcement comes as a surprise to those who thought the dual position would be split between two people, a curator based locally and a director hailing from abroad, according to Haaretz. Landau will be replacing Mordechai Omer, the former director and chief curator, who died eight months ago.”

According to The New York Times, the J. Paul Getty Museum announced that Timothy Potts, former director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, will replace Michael Brand who left the museum in 2010.

Michael Brand was recently named Director of the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney, according to ABC Sydney. “His first priority is to ensure the Gallery remains ‘a popular, admired and loved gallery, in a great international city.’ And one thing he’s keen to do is continue the ‘ambitious’ trend the Gallery’s had of generating its own exhibitions instead of taking packaged versions.”

On February 29, the Russian artist and historian Eliy Belyutin died. In 1954 he founded a school of painting called “New Reality” that focused on artists’ feelings and thoughts. He also wrote art-history books including two volumes on 19th century Russian art, which he co-wrote with Nina Molina.