Lynn Zelevansky is an American art historian and curator. Formerly Henry Heinz II Director of the Carnegie Museum of Art, she is currently based in New York City. Zelevansky curated "Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama" and "Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form" for Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 1995 to 2009. While working at MoMA, she curated “Sense and Sensibility: Women Artists and Minimalism in the Nineties”, that institution’s first all-female exhibition. AICA awarded it "Best Emerging Art Exhibition New York."
Early life and education
Zelevansky was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Her father worked in the insurance and real estate business. She attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School through high school, graduating in 1965. She met her future husband Paul Zelevansky during her first week at Carnegie Institute of Technology. They married in 1968, but she transferred to Pratt Institute, where she graduated with a BFA in Photography in 1971. Following graduation, she worked as a photographer and free-lance critic, reviewing photography and art exhibitions for various publications. During this period, she also taught photography and criticism at Pratt, Cooper Union, and the New School. In 1984, with two children at home, she began the graduate program at NYU's Institute of Fine Arts, earning her MA in 1987, and later completing coursework towards her doctorate. During her studies, Zelevansky co-curated exhibitions for Pratt Institute and Camerawork.
Curatorial career
In 1986, Zelevansky joined MoMA’s Department of Painting and Sculpture as a curatorial assistant and remained there until 1995. While at MoMA, she assisted William Rubins on "Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism," for which she edited the second volume of the catalog, and on the Ad Reinhardt exhibition and assisted on exhibitions of the work of Vito Acconci, and Robert Ryman. In addition to curating “Sense and Sensibility," she organized Projects exhibitions for: Houston Conwill, Cildo Meireles, Guillermo Kuitca, Suzanne Lafont, and Gabriel Orozco. Zelevansky was awarded a 1995 Peter Norton Family Foundation Curator's Grant. In 1997, Zelevansky was the keynote speaker at Teachers College "Women in Arts and Culture" In 1995 Zelevansky became Assistant Curator in the department of Modern and Contemporary Art at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, eventually becoming the Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and Department Head, Contemporary Art While at LACMA, she and Laura Hoptman co-curated the first US museum survey of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. She also organized a retrospective for Robert Therrien, and Diego Rivera. During this period, she originated several group exhibitions such as "Longing and Memory", "Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form", and "Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea". Michael Kimmelman called "Beyond Geometry" a "creative rethinking of the history of postwar vanguard art in the West" and AICA awarded it "Best Thematic Exhibition Nationally." On the occasion of "Beyond Geometry," the J. Paul Getty Museum hosted the symposium "Structures and Systems: An Intercontinental Art World." In 2009, Zelevansky became Henry J. Heinz II Director of the Carnegie Museum of Art, where she remained until the end of 2017. While at the Carnegie, she collaborated with Elisabeth Sussman on "Paul Thek: Diver" and together with Sussman and James Rondeau on "Hélio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium". Zelevansky oversaw the 2013 presentation of the Carnegie International, which highlighted the intersections of contemporary international art and activism and demonstrated the ways the Carnegie International had influenced its collection.
