Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The Art Institute of Chicago announced today that Daniel Walker—not the former Illinois governor but a big-time art scholar—will be its (vanity title warning: take a breath) Pritzker Chair and Curator of Asian Art and its Chair and Christa C. Mayer Thurman Curator of Textiles. Got that? In a statement, James Cuno—AIC’s president and Eloise Martin director—said that Walker’s experience at major museums and his distinguished scholarship “make him the ideal leader of two curatorial departments.” A former head of the Islamic Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walker was director of the Textile Museum in Washington, DC, from 2005 until he resigned in 2009, blaming the difficult economic climate. The job was then eliminated as part of cost-cutting measures necessitated by huge drops in the Textile Museum’s income and assets. He starts October 18.
