Eastman House appoints Lisa Hostetler as Curator-in-Charge of Photography

[Michael Pritchard]

George Eastman House announced today the appointment of Lisa Hostetler, PhD, as Curator-in-Charge of its Department of Photography. She will assume this role prior to year-end. 

Hostetler brings almost 20 years of academic and museum experience to her new position with George Eastman House. She is currently the McEvoy Family Curator for Photography at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

Hostetler was previously curator of photographs at the Milwaukee Art Museum for seven years. Color Rush: 75 Years of Color Photography in America, her final exhibition and book project in Milwaukee, included 22 photographs from the George Eastman House collection. During her tenure at the museum, she also organized several other exhibitions, including Taryn Simon: Photographs and Texts, which toured internationally; Street Seen: The Psychological Gesture in American Photography, 1940–1959; Unmasked & Anonymous: Shimon & Lindemann Consider Portraiture; Photographs from the End of the Earth; In Living Color: Photographs by Saul Leiter; andThe American West 1871–1874: Photographs from the American Geographical Society Library.

“I met with many talented curators during our search process, but from its inception I considered Dr. Hostetler to be the leading candidate for this important position,” said Bruce Barnes, the Ron and Donna Fielding Director at George Eastman House. “I had spent time with her on several occasions while she was at the Milwaukee Art Museum and was extraordinarily impressed with her knowledge of the history of photography and sharp eye for contemporary art. Her Color Rush exhibition was perhaps the most beautiful photography survey I have seen, and her early career retrospective of the works of Taryn Simon was a stunning revelation.”

“I am honored to take the role of leading George Eastman House’s photography department into the future,” said Hostetler. “The museum’s collections are among the best in the world, and offer tremendous opportunities for scholarship, touring exhibitions, and online access. I am eager to make the most of the historic collection and share the institution’s renewed commitment to building its holdings of works by contemporary artists.”

Hostetler was co-author (with Katherine Bussard) of Color Rush: American Color Photography from Stieglitz to Sherman, author of Street Seen: The Psychological Gesture in American Photography, 1940–1959, and contributor to Animals Are Outside Today; Unmasked & Anonymous: Shimon & Lindemann Consider Portraiture; Louis Faurer, edited by Anne Tucker; and Reflections in a Glass Eye: Works from the International Center of Photography Collection.

From 2001 to 2005, Hostetler was a research associate in the department of photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she curated exhibitions on August Sander, Charles Sheeler’s contemporaries, and selections from the Gilman Paper Company Collection. She was registrar at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York City from 1999 to 2001.

Hostetler received a bachelor’s degree in art history, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from New York University and earned both a master’s degree and a doctorate in the history of art from Princeton University, where she studied under Professor Peter C. Bunnell and wrote her dissertation on the photographs of Louis Faurer. She has taught at New York University, Princeton University, and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.