CAM St. Louis Names New Director

The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) has appointed Lisa Melandri incoming director. Melandri has served as deputy director for exhibitions and programs at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMoA) since 2001. She will assume her new post in August.

CAM began its search in December 2011, when former director Paul Ha departed to lead MIT's List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, MA. Since then, board member Dwyer Brown has served as interim director.
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Whitney Museum Gets Big Grant From Luce Foundation

The Whitney Museum of American Art has more to celebrate this year than its 75th anniversary. Director Adam D. Weinberg announced yesterday that the museum will receive a $1.5 million grant, courtesy of the Henry Luce Foundation, established in 1936 by the cofounder and editor in chief of Time Inc. to support scholarship and education. The grant will be applied to the institution's $720-million expansion into a new downtown building, allowing "a far more comprehensive view of the Whitney's unsurpassed collection of modern and contemporary American art," according to Weinberg.
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Guggenheim Announces Major New Initiative

Though there will be no new Frank Gehry building to rival that in Bilbao, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has embarked on an expansion.

Officially titled the Guggenheim UBS Map Global Art Initiative, the project seeks to enhance the institution's permanent collection with works from various regions of the globe in order to, in director Richard Armstrong's words, "challenge our Western-centric views of art history."
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Google Art Announces Major Upgrade

Google's plan to digitize the art world is gaining traction. Today the search engine giant announced the expansion of its Arts Project, launched in 2011. Now users have access to over 30,000 artworks at museums in 40 countries.

Using Google's Street View technology, the updated site allows art enthusiasts to virtually stroll the halls of 46 of the world's leading cultural institutions. Initiated with just four U.S. museums, the Art Project now includes 29 American venues.
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