Eckmann to retire as Kemper Art Museum director in 2027

Sabine Eckmann, PhD, the William T. Kemper Director and Chief Curator of the Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis, will retire in January 2027 after more than 20 years of exceptional leadership.

Eckmann first joined the museum as curator in 2000 and was named director and chief curator in 2005. The following year, with the establishment of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, she led the museum through its incorporation into the newly formed school and its move into new facilities.

“For the last two decades, I have been honored to count Sabine as a trusted colleague and collaborator as we established the Sam Fox School as a leader in interdisciplinary study of art, architecture, and design,” said Carmon Colangelo, the Ralph J. Nagel Dean of the Sam Fox School. “I am grateful for her vision and extraordinary contributions to the Sam Fox School, WashU, and our broader community.”

During Eckmann’s tenure, the museum has undergone significant growth in size, visibility, and impact, strengthening its role as a center of cultural and intellectual life both on campus, in St. Louis and beyond. She has curated numerous award-winning projects, including “Reality Bites: Making Avant-garde Art in Post-Wall Germany” (2007), for which she received the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation award for curatorial innovation. She was named the inaugural William T. Kemper Director and Chief Curator in 2010.

“By exploring art and its histories through many perspectives and in ever-new spatial arrangements, at the museum we strive to continuously educate ourselves, the WashU community, and general audiences alike,” said Eckmann. “Our curatorial practice aims to center artworks that at their best are often counter proposals, rooted in the creative imagination and frequently alogical; they shape open-ended, complex and ambiguous platforms for engaging the human condition. Reflecting on these rich experiences, I feel very grateful to have had the opportunity to shape the Kemper Art Museum and its programs over the last two decades. I am deeply indebted to Dean Carmon Colangelo for his trust and energetic, collaborative leadership.”

Under Eckmann’s stewardship, the museum expanded from a small number of galleries in Steinberg Hall to a multilevel building that now welcomes more than 30,000 visitors annually. In 2019, she guided the museum through a major expansion as part of WashU’s East End transformation, more than doubling exhibition space for the permanent collection.

During her tenure, the museum’s collection has grown from approximately 3,500 objects to more than 8,000 works, building on its longstanding strengths in 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century European and American art while expanding its holdings of global contemporary art. Today, the Kemper Art Museum holds one of the finest university art collections in the United States.

As director and chief curator, Eckmann oversaw the publication of 35 scholarly catalogs, the organization of hundreds of public programs, and the installation of 154 special exhibitions. These include collaborations with cultural organizations such as the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the Getty Research Institute, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Phillips Collection, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, and the Kunstmuseum Bonn, among many others. Eckmann personally curated 28 exhibitions, including monographic shows for Eleanor Antin, Christian Jankowski, Sharon Lockhart, Elizabeth Peyton and Sam Durant. Recent exhibitions include the surveys “Ai Weiwei: Bare Life” (2019) and “Katharina Grosse Studio Paintings, 1988–2022: Returns, Revisions, Inventions” (2022).

She led the museum through two strategic plans and a rigorous multiyear reaccreditation process with the American Alliance of Museums. She also oversaw the creation of new departments, including publications, education, membership, visitor services, and marketing, more than tripling the museum’s full-time staff and enabling significant new programming initiatives.

Eckmann has played an instrumental role in strengthening the Kemper Art Museum’s relationships across campus, throughout St. Louis, and within the broader museum field, expanding the museum’s reach and creating more opportunities for public engagement.

In 2006, she established the Art Collection Committee, a subgroup of the Sam Fox School National Council, which continues to guide the museum’s acquisitions and long-range collection development plans, and builds crucial relationships in support of the museum’s goals and fundraising efforts. In 2012, she was appointed to the Association of Art Museum Directors, where she has worked alongside her peers to advocate for university art museums more broadly.

On campus, Eckmann established the Director’s Advisory Committee to foster deeper engagement with students and faculty across disciplines. Under her guidance, the museum has created numerous unique teaching and research opportunities for WashU students and faculty, and instituted listening sessions to gather community feedback on exhibitions and programs.

Alongside her leadership as director, Eckmann has maintained an internationally recognized scholarly practice focused on 20th- and 21st-century art, particularly German and European art, with an emphasis on art and politics, medium aesthetics, and critical theory.

In addition to curating numerous award-winning projects, Eckmann has authored, co-edited, or contributed to 18 books, exhibition catalogs, and anthologies published around the world, and written more than 50 scholarly essays. “New Objectivity: Modern German Art in the Weimar Republic 1919–1933” (2015), which she co-edited with Stephanie Barron of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, won the College Art Association Alfred Barr Jr. Award and the Association of Art Museum Curators’ Award for excellence. Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the German Academic Exchange Service, and the Andy Warhol Foundation, among others.

Eckmann taught courses in WashU’s Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences for more than a decade. She has delivered myriad lectures, panels, and keynote presentations at top-tier universities, research institutes, and art museums across the United States and Europe. This next chapter will provide an opportunity for her to further pursue her scholarship.

Charlie White, the newly appointed Ralph J. Nagel Dean of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, will lead the search for Eckmann’s successor.