January 8, 2018, New York, NY—Christine Kuan, Director and CEO of Sotheby’s Institute of Art-New York, has appointed Eric Michael Wolf, PhD, MSLIS, as the new Head Librarian of the Institute beginning February 1st.
Kuan said, “Dr. Wolf brings a wealth of art knowledge and expertise to the Institute from his years of experience as Head Librarian at the Menil Collection and as faculty at UT Austin and other prestigious academic institutions. He will be instrumental in ensuring that the Institute’s library will continue to serve the unique research needs of our graduate students and of our faculty, who have been part of the Institute’s pioneering work in the study of art history, art business, and international art markets for nearly 50 years.”
"He will be instrumental in ensuring that the Institute’s library will continue to serve the unique research needs of our graduate students and of our faculty."
Wolf said, “I am very excited to join the staff and faculty at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in helping to train the future leaders of the art world.”
Wolf brings nearly two decades of experience as an art librarian, teacher, and art historian to the position. He received his Bachelor’s degree in art history from the University of California at Santa Cruz, his Master’s of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in the history of art and architecture from Harvard University, and his Master’s of Science in Library and Information Science from the Pratt Institute.
Wolf began his career as an art librarian as Assistant (later Associate) Cataloguer at the Frick Art Reference Library of the Frick Collection in New York. Subsequently he has worked as Director of the Library at the New York School of Interior Design. Throughout his professional career he has taught art history and museum studies at institutions including the University of Massachusetts at Boston, the Honors College at the University of Houston, and the Department of Art and Art History in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Most recently, Wolf served as Head Librarian at the Menil Collection in Houston, TX.
An active scholar on the history of art and architecture, Wolf has published widely on topics ranging from museum architecture (in his 2010 monograph American Art Museum Architecture: Documents and Design, New York: W.W. Norton and Company) to scholarly articles on the Italian Renaissance artist and architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini, to professional literature on digital projects in art libraries in peer-reviewed journals. He has also contributed to exhibition catalogues and publications at museums he has worked at including an essay in the 2014 exhibition catalogue Experiments with Truth: Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence at the Menil Collection, curated by Josef Helfenstein.
Wolf has given many invited public lectures including a talk on the Rothko Chapel in conjunction with the 2015 Rothko retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and a lecture on the history of the Museum of Modern Art, New York at the First Annual Museum Studies Symposium at the University of Texas at Austin, held at the Blanton Museum of Art in 2014.